Krugminator2
Member

I am just curious why does almost every libertarian legal person (minus Judge Nap) support Kavanaugh? Is it really selling out when almost all libertarians who know about the law support Kavanaugh? I get that Kavanaugh is bad on metadata. I mean maybe I will be proven wrong, but I think shooting down environmental regulations, protecting religious freedom, protecting school choice, ending eminent domain abuses, curbing union power are far more important issues. If I were in the Senate, not only would I vote to confirm Kavanaugh, I would be quite pleased with it. Gary Johnson supported Kavanaugh. Mike Lee. Rand. It really was an easy vote. I would have been disappointed had Rand voted against Kavanaugh.

Name one First Amendment case that Ruth Bader Ginsburg was stronger on that Antonin Scalia. Besides all of the cases above, is forcing public sector union workers to contribute to Democratic candidates what First Amendment advocates? My experience is even the most flag waving meathead conservative (let's say Sean Hannity) is far better on the First Amendment that 90% of the people on the left. I guess some liberals are better on flag burning (though Hillary Clinton sponsored an amendment banning flag burning).

Should have said "isn't". Republicans should worry about spending. Deficits and surpluses don't matter. All that matters is spending takes resources out of the private economy. If they run deficits from a tax shortfall, that isn't a big deal at all. As far as the interest on the debt which I see you bring up, that is the best thing government can spend money on. It doesn't take any physical resources away from the private economy.

Okay. Notable government spending isn't the determining factor.

Which amendments specifically? You used that in the plural. ALL the liberal justices are horrific on the 1st Amendment compared to the conservative judges. Obviously terrible on the second. Are they even better on the 4th Amendment? All the liberal judges supported eminent domain in the Kelo decision. Seems bad. I doubt they are better than Scalia was and Gorsuch on search and seizure stuff. Obviously terrible on the 10th Amendment. I know it is a Ron Paul and Gary Johnson talking point that liberals are better on civil liberties issues. It is really isn't true though. Antonin Scalia and Thomas were faarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr better than Ruth Bader Ginsburg civil liberties. It isn't even close. Making nuns pay for contraception, bakers bake penis cakes, limiting political speech in the form of campaign contributions, seizing property for economic private economic development are issues where liberal judges are just bad. Maybe they are better on the major issue of quartering soldiers.

Yeah. That never happened, at least not while he has been president.

Yeah.... So... What am I supposed to be remembering? What are you talking about? He is the single most prominent Fed critic to ever live. It is kind of what he is famous for. He spent his career advocating ending the Federal Reserve system. 1994 2006

No. He's really not. Saying stuff like that should eliminate all credibility from you on anything. All three preferable (by far) to Kagan and Sotomayor I don't care. That means nothing. It is a nothing issue. Nixon wanted to ban all handguns. If this is the kind of thing that is considered "gun control" that is pretty good place to be in.

Fiscal conservatism is certainly part of Gary Johnson's definition of libertarianism. I do consider Gary a libertarian so I guess there is one person who agrees. Zippyjuan is big on that. Howard Dean is for balanced budgets. He says he is a fiscal conservative. Michael Bloomberg says he is a fiscal conservative. People who want smaller government like Walter Williams and Milton Friedman, not so big balanced budgets or paying down debt. https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/02/18/lets-limit-spending Try harder. Be better. You should post less and listen more and learn more about the philosophy.

When Democrats last held Congress and the Presidency, you got Kagan and Sotomayor on the Supreme Court. Obamacare. Dodd-Frank. Cash for Clunkers. And massive increases in environmental regulations. With Trump and Republicans, you get good to great judges not just on the Supreme Court but the lower courts are getting packed. A corporate income tax rate that is competitive with the rest of the world. A slowdown of the regulatory state that hasn't been seen in modern history. No transaction tax. No push for universal health care. No real gun control. On a scale of ten, Republicans are an 11 on the gun issue. They are great on guns. Not just good. They are pretty absolutist in the face of pressure on that issue. As far as paying down the debt, when did that ever become a goal of libertarians? That isn't my goal. You bitched about Amash being against crony tax loopholes on the state level where budgets have to be balanced but worry about having high taxes to pay the national debt? That is the complete opposite view a libertarian should take. The budget should always be at a deficit on the federal level. The spending is the bad part but even that is in line with what has been historically going back to the 50s as a share of GDP. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/FYONGDA188S I usually vote LP in statewide and national races but will vote Republican this year. Very pleased.

I missed the first two episodes. Watched the PC babies episode. The show is amazing. Never gets old. Every season is good.

In my opinion, it never makes sense to bailout a specific business because you have moral hazard in the future. I would argue that bailing out Chrysler in the 70's contributed to the problems Ford and GM had in 2008. It probably affected how unions and management negotiated. I would have let GM fail. I get that you are arguing that the economy as a whole is the same as a micro level. You can certainly argue that the pain of the Great Depression changed behavior for the better over the next generation or two. It made people more debt averse. I would argue that a decade or more of nationwide suffering pretty high price to pay. To me having a policy of growing incomes by a fixed amount accomplishes both the Austrian goal of not having artificially low interest rates and the monetarist goals of not having debt deflation. For example say you are going to target income growth of 4%. If the economy is growing at 6% that means the inflation rate would be -2% so you would have mild deflation. If the economy contracts and shrinks at -2% that means you would want inflation of 6%. Since people know exactly what policy is going to be over the long term they should be fooled by artificially low rates.

It is hard to know. It really depends on the specific subsidy. Hayek emphasized that you should have predictable rules even if they are suboptimal. So let's use real examples. I am strongly against the mortgage interest deduction. It is terrible policy that encourages overconsumption in housing. But people made decisions based on that policy. A lot of people who bought homes and worked as builders or real estate agents made life decisions around that policy. I would phase it out and not eliminate it immediately. Likewise with Social Security. I might reduce benefits or not let benefits keep up with inflation but I would not eliminate Social Security day one because people made decisions around receiving benefits. As far as artificially low interest rates, some people will and should go bankrupt when you have a recession. But if incomes start to fall across the board, you will have a lot of needless bankruptcies that serve no purpose and will prolong a depression. It doesn't make sense from a cost benefit standpoint. And you don't need to take my word for it. There was something called the Great Depression which was caused by letting the money supply collapse. Rothbard's policy of letting the world go to hell was tried. His only response is tariffs and raising taxes were the real cause a 15 year downturn. There is nothing to substantiate that but he had to come up with something that fit his ideology. You can believe that I guess. But the debt deflation and bank failure idea I used fits very nicely with what happened. (And it is agreed on by pretty much everyone else. Not a reason to believe something but I feel like people who have devoted their lives to a topic should be listened to in general.) There were a ton of bankruptcies and people who lost houses after 2008. Do you think the economy would have been even better served with a cleansing Great Depression Part 2 where even more people lost their houses? Ben Bernanke did a lot wrong but he is the reason 2008 was really a fairly mild recession relative to what it should have been. You can argue moral hazard but we might still be in a depression if Rothbard had his way. I am not sure that would be worth it.

I added this "He deliberately takes things out of context if he wants to attack someone. He criticized Adam Smith for supporting a sales tax or a tariff on something, which was true. But that product was outlawed. It would be similar to criticizing someone for supporting a tax on marijuana when marijuana is illegal. Context matters." You can Google David Friedman and Rothbard or he talks about this stuff at the 4 minute mark. Debt is priced in nominal dollars. So if you let wages and prices fall across the board, then people won't be able to service that debt. The more people who can't service their debt the worse the economy gets. You have the initial people who go bankrupt for making poor financial decisions, then you get a second wave of people who run into problems as the economy gets worse. And then you get banks running into financial problems. You get a deflationary spiral and a lot of needless bankruptcies and the bankruptcy process can be slow so the adjustment process isn't going to be quick.

Inflation did end. At least the major problem of inflation ended. Inflation started its descent because of Reagan and it took a painful recession to end it. To criticize Reagan for arguably his greatest accomplishment is ridiculous. And it is typical Rothbard whether it is Adam Smith or whomever. He deliberately takes things out of context if he wants to attack someone. He criticized Adam Smith for supporting a sales tax or a tariff on something, which was true. But that product was outlawed. It would be similar to criticizing someone for supporting a tax on marijuana when marijuana is illegal. Context matters. This should rebut most of what you said. Even if Adam Smith contributed nothing original (which I have no idea if that true), it doesn't matter. Smith actually influenced the world. Rothbard is a guy, who at least in his mind, has the greatest product in the world but he didn't sell it. So he belittles people with slightly less good products who actually do sell it. I'll take the guys (Friedman/Hayek) who actually are able to get their ideas accepted and put into practice. Good ideas aren't worth shit if they don't sell. It's not. And no serious economist thinks otherwise, including just about every serious Austrian economist. Literally no one who does academic work thinks deflationary depressions are a good idea. If you like big government, you should love deflation. Because markets will get blamed for the suffering deflation will cause and people like FDR will get elected.

The list is endless. But here is David Friedman to start http://daviddfriedman.blogspot.com/2011/06/murray-rothbard-on-me-and-vice-versa.html He calls Adam Smith a fraud when you could argue Adam Smith is the most important liberty person in the history of the world. He nitpicks Friedman but the doesn't acknowledge that Friedman almost single-handedly ended the draft. Also little known fact, Rothbard got exposed like so many other people to libertarianism from.............. Milton Friedman. Kind of significant. https://www.econlib.org/archives/2011/12/rothbard_on_sti.html He blamed inflation on Reagan. What? That doesn't even make sense. Reagan deserves the credit for ending inflation. Thomas Sowell and Milton Friedman list it as Reagan's single greatest accomplishment. What is Rothbard talking about? The country had the biggest post Great Depression recession under Reagan to beat inflation. He wrote what swell guy Che was. https://mises.org/library/ernesto-che-guevara-rip He hated Reagan but supported Pat Buchanan, Ross Perot, and Strom Thurmond for president. And oh yeah, LBJ over Goldwater. And there is the economic stuff. He thought deflation was good policy in a depression and never changed his mind. That's stupid and makes free market people look like idiots.

Worth noting that Murray Rothbard was an absolute imbecile on anything related to politics and was a mediocre to bad economist. Rothbard had no interest acting life a scientist in search of truth. Instead, he wanted to be a cult builder. And the economist Rothbard is most similar to (at least in style) is Paul Krugman. They are both fundamentally dishonest and will say anything to be provocative.

Usually I would buy the shit out of this. Statistically it is a good buy right here. But something doesn't "feel" right. This doesn't feel panicky enough. Wouldn't be surprised to see SPY sell off. Will probably miss the rally but gut says prices go lower. VIX is down on a down day. which is really weird Me thinks people a little too conditioned for a bounce.

Both ETH and BTC broke down and not up out of the narrow range. Would have been a good short on BTC.

Really curious to see what the market does today. Normal would be a gap down, sell off and rally to green. If it doesn't do that and gaps down has a weak rally and continues down you might get another huge selloff.

Strangely no one ever questions that assumption. (FWIW, this time probably is different because of how overvalued stocks are)

Their internal organs from violent animals who want to hurt them because they are taking away free stuff?

Actually that is completely wrong. The people doing the most good are the ones the violent animals want to harm the most.

The stock market drop in 1929 had nothing to do with with the Great Depression. Market drops don't cause huge economic downturns. They might be caused by foreseeing an economic downturn but not the other way around. There was not a Great Depression after 1987 or the Nasdaq bursting. That was especially true in 1929 when only a small number of people even owned stocks. FDR was brought about by bad monetary policy. The surest way to get leaders even worse than Obama and Trump after 2008 would have been to listen to people who just want to let the world go to hell and let deflation work its magic just purging the malinvestment.

ETH looks ready to go here at 225 for maybe a 50-75 dollar pop.

It is funny watching the insane delusion from the left. This was not a win for Democrats. I took it as a forgone conclusion the Democrats would take the House. They still probably will but this puts the House back in play. The more these domestic terrorist protesters act like animals and the more you have shrill banshees like Elizabeth Warren on TV the better that is for Republicans. Leftists are just angry, bitter, unhappy losers that decent people don't want to be associated with. The Democratic Party just isn't a party for middle class productive people. It is a party for the aggrieved and people with white guilt.

No big deal. Just Tom Arnold inciting violence. 1047653255507898368

Ummm...Yes. Judge Napolitano is literally the only one that I know of which I even said in a previous post and implied by using Napolitano in the post you are responding to. Feel free to find just one other libertarian legal person who is against Kavanaugh. I can find like 15 who support him.