The Logical Absurdity of Libertarianism: Partial Omniscience

[PaulConventionWV]

The fact that they aren't pragmatarians.

There's your circular logic.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

If you truly hate your representatives...then prove it by liking tax choice on facebook. Nothing will scare your representatives more than a growing consensus that the power of the purse should be taken from them.

Your "growing consensus" is now a whopping 49 people. I could make it 50, but I think the time and effort used to click that button simply wouldn't be worth it.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

How many likes would it take for them to quake in their boots? And at which point, if any, would you like tax choice on facebook in order to help contribute to congress's fear of being made redundant?

Probably infinity raised to e... considering that the vast majority of those likes are people who saw the word "choice", clicked like and then scurried away. I hope you didn't actually think there are 49 people in this world who agree with you.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

So you do believe in God? So you believe in something that is obviously unreal...but you don't believe in things that are obviously real...involuntary taxation and public goods.



No it's not. You think it is...so you don't bother to learn about economics. Learn about economics and then tell me that the problem is that people don't understand morality.

Right, it's so obvious, isn't it? Forget about philosophical arguments because you already have all the answers and you know for certain that there is nothing beyond the world you experience. Never mind that we've been proving that whole idea wrong since the beginning of time. You can't look at this world to explain everything. Some things require a little philosophy, a little abstract thought, something you apparently aren't very good at.

I guess I shouldn't be surprised coming from the guy who thinks Facebook likes are going to change the world.

 

[PaulConventionWV]

Should not exist, not do exist.



It's a mix and whatever answer I give you are going to say is wrong. I'm not playing that game with you. It would be as pointless as all of these threads you've created over the years.

The answer is Keynes.

 

[Acala]

If you truly hate your representatives...then prove it by liking tax choice on facebook. Nothing will scare your representatives more than a growing consensus that the power of the purse should be taken from them.

It is not a question of hating my representatives, it is a question of understanding that their motivation is to use their position to enhance their wealth and power by catering to the special interest groups that benefit from government largesse. My personal preferences for how tax money is spent is relevant to them only to the degreee I am in a position to enhance their power and wealth, meaning not at all.

Although your procedural gimmick might force the government to use some different techniques and channels to funnel wealth into the pockets of the insiders, it would in no way prevent that from happening. As long as the government has resources to give away, corruption will eventually control it. The only solution is to deny to government the power to extract resources from the public by force.

I will grant you this: in the case of a society where government is TRULY by consent of the governed (not ersatz consent through democracy) then your procedure might be a decent way for the public to express preferences. But a complete opt-out must always be an option, else you are still just talking slavery of one kind or another.

But slavery seems to be fine with you as long as the slaves have the appearance of directing the resources they gather for the man.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Stupidly opposing something is the same thing as voting for it.

Opposing something is not the same as supporting it. These are opposite actions.

You seem to have become quite agitated. I do not remember you constantly swearing and lashing out irrationally when last I talked with you (a year or so ago?).

Come back to the land of logic and rationality, X. Opposing is not supporting.

The title of your thread is: "The Logical Absurdity of Libertarianism: Partial Omniscience"

This is a bizarre title. The title is saying, as best I can tell, that you believe that Libertarianism is a logical absurdity, and that it is such because it believes in partial omniscience. What is partial omniscience? How does that even parse? Wouldn't "partial omniscience" be simply "science"? The partial cancels out the omni.

But I will make your arguments for you, because you assuredly are not going to do so yourself, not coherently. Partial omniscience could also mean that you believe libertarians believe in the same omniscience that central planners believe in, just not in all areas, all the time. But why would you claim that libertarians believe this? I do not know. The most likely explanation is a very partial and fragmented understanding of what libertarianism is, combined with a low IQ, combined with lots of free time on the internet doing absolutely nothing productive, leading to total confusion. But I could be wrong (I am not omniscient).

In point of fact, libertarians do not believe that we mortals are currently omniscient. Or if any do, it is a religious or quasi-religious belief separate from and having no bearing on their belief in libertarianism. Libertarianism is a belief system advocating for completely voluntary interactions in life. It is advocating, most importantly, for an end to the monopoly provision of dispute resolution. That means an end to forced payments to that monopoly, an end to massive slaughter events called wars engaged in by that monopoly, an end to mass enslavement to staff these slaughter events, and an end to all other outrages and abuses, large and small, undertaken by that monopoly.

If you, too, are against such a barbaric central monopoly, then you are one of us. If you support and intellectually defend such a barbaric central monopoly.... Why?

 

[Xerographica]

Your "growing consensus" is now a whopping 49 people. I could make it 50, but I think the time and effort used to click that button simply wouldn't be worth it.

The answer is Keynes.

A small step in the right direction is worth far more than a huge leap in the wrong direction.

 

[Xerographica]

Although your procedural gimmick might force the government to use some different techniques and channels to funnel wealth into the pockets of the insiders, it would in no way prevent that from happening. As long as the government has resources to give away, corruption will eventually control it. The only solution is to deny to government the power to extract resources from the public by force.

This makes absolutely no sense. Why would you give your money to Subway if they just go out and give your sandwich to a random person on the street? If you do continue to give your money to Subway...then why should I complain if you want to buy free lunches for random people? I might disagree with the effectiveness of your method...but at least you're not making a mistake with my money.

Markets work because people have the freedom to shoot themselves in the feet. They also work because people strive to avoid shooting themselves in the feet. If you're going to argue that a pragmatarian system is going to allow people to shoot each other in the feet...then don't be vague about it. Be specific. Use specific government organizations.

Environmentalists are going to give their taxes to the EPA and then the EPA's going to accept bribes from corporations that want to pollute. Is that what you're envisioning?

Markets work because of costless exit. If at any time you don't value the exchange that is currently taking place between yourself and I...then you can easily exit from this exchange. It would be exactly the same thing in the public sector. If you perceive that a government organization is spending your money in ways that you do not value...then you would be free to exit from the exchange.

I will grant you this: in the case of a society where government is TRULY by consent of the governed (not ersatz consent through democracy) then your procedure might be a decent way for the public to express preferences. But a complete opt-out must always be an option, else you are still just talking slavery of one kind or another.

LOL...a complete opt-out is always an option. Nobody would stop you from giving up all your possessions and living in a monastery for the rest of your life. But if you choose to earn money...and enough of your citizens are willing to pay the IRS to try and ensure that everybody chips in for public goods...then don't blame the IRS. Blame the citizens who don't trust you to voluntarily contribute.

But slavery seems to be fine with you as long as the slaves have the appearance of directing the resources they gather for the man.

If you're arguing that there's a giant demand for slavery...then getting rid of the government won't do a damn thing to eliminate the demand. It will simply create a giant opportunity for an intrepid entrepreneur.

 

[Xerographica]

Opposing something is not the same as supporting it. These are opposite actions.

You seem to have become quite agitated. I do not remember you constantly swearing and lashing out irrationally when last I talked with you (a year or so ago?).

Come back to the land of logic and rationality, X. Opposing is not supporting.

Sometimes the depth of idiocy I encounter wears my patience thin. Take your idiocy for example. I drew a picture to try and help you see it for yourself...

The title of your thread is: "The Logical Absurdity of Libertarianism: Partial Omniscience"

This is a bizarre title. The title is saying, as best I can tell, that you believe that Libertarianism is a logical absurdity, and that it is such because it believes in partial omniscience. What is partial omniscience? How does that even parse? Wouldn't "partial omniscience" be simply "science"? The partial cancels out the omni.

But I will make your arguments for you, because you assuredly are not going to do so yourself, not coherently. Partial omniscience could also mean that you believe libertarians believe in the same omniscience that central planners believe in, just not in all areas, all the time. But why would you claim that libertarians believe this? I do not know. The most likely explanation is a very partial and fragmented understanding of what libertarianism is, combined with a low IQ, combined with lots of free time on the internet doing absolutely nothing productive, leading to total confusion. But I could be wrong (I am not omniscient).

Whatever my IQ is...I'm certainly a genius compared to you. Libertarians assume partial omniscience because they believe that there is a scope of government. Look, here's another picture for your little baby brain...



And here it is in the words of Ayn Rand....

The proper functions of a government fall into three broad categories, all of them involving the issues of physical force and the protection of men’s rights: the police, to protect men from criminals—the armed services, to protect men from foreign invaders—the law courts, to settle disputes among men according to objective laws.

If you need to read the proper scope of government in the words of more libertarians...then here you go...libertarianism.

Now look at the drawing I created for you in the OP...



Libertarians believe that congress can somehow "divine" exactly how much defense, courts and police should be provided. This means that libertarians assume partial omniscience. The fact that I have to explain something so simple and straightforward to you means that your head is so far up your ass that I don't think any amount of explanation will help you understand such a simple concept.

To be clear...liberals also assume partial omniscience. They just assume more of it than libertarians do. Clearly it's better to assume less, rather than more, omniscience. But to assume any amount of omniscience is still completely retarded. Which is exactly why taxpayers should be free to shop for themselves in the public sector.

 

[jon_perez]

Isn't "partial omniscience" an oxymoron?

Or simply put, a moronic term concocted by same?

 

[Acala]

This makes absolutely no sense. Why would you give your money to Subway if they just go out and give your sandwich to a random person on the street? If you do continue to give your money to Subway...then why should I complain if you want to buy free lunches for random people? I might disagree with the effectiveness of your method...but at least you're not making a mistake with my money.

Markets work because people have the freedom to shoot themselves in the feet. They also work because people strive to avoid shooting themselves in the feet. If you're going to argue that a pragmatarian system is going to allow people to shoot each other in the feet...then don't be vague about it. Be specific. Use specific government organizations.

Environmentalists are going to give their taxes to the EPA and then the EPA's going to accept bribes from corporations that want to pollute. Is that what you're envisioning?

Markets work because of costless exit. If at any time you don't value the exchange that is currently taking place between yourself and I...then you can easily exit from this exchange. It would be exactly the same thing in the public sector. If you perceive that a government organization is spending your money in ways that you do not value...then you would be free to exit from the exchange.



LOL...a complete opt-out is always an option. Nobody would stop you from giving up all your possessions and living in a monastery for the rest of your life. But if you choose to earn money...and enough of your citizens are willing to pay the IRS to try and ensure that everybody chips in for public goods...then don't blame the IRS. Blame the citizens who don't trust you to voluntarily contribute.



If you're arguing that there's a giant demand for slavery...then getting rid of the government won't do a damn thing to eliminate the demand. It will simply create a giant opportunity for an intrepid entrepreneur.

I don't expect you to respond rationally, since your method is to obfuscate and abuse. But others might be reading this so:

As I understand your proposal, each citizen would be forced to pay a certain amount of money to the State, as they do now. Failure to do so would result in the use of whatever force is necessary to extract the money, as with the current system. The amount of money to be taken would be decided by the majority of voters. So a majority of voters could decide that everyone in a certain class should have all of their wealth confiscated and given to the state. As long as that certain class was in the minority, too bad for them. The beauty of democracy.

But, the saving grace of your system is that the members of the class who have had their property confiscated could choose how the confiscated money would be spent. Of course, as a practical matter, unless the ballot were to be thousands of pages long, the choices would necessarily be broadly stated and be limited in number. The ballot could never say, for example, "pay $10,000 to buy a new garage for Sam Phelps". At most it could say "authorize the department of household renovation a billion dollars for fiscal 2013". Even that would run hundreds of pages if the government were to be the size of the current one.

Given that, the power brokering and corruption would manifest first in the selection of choices for the ballot and then in the spending itself. I see no impediment whatsoever to exactly the kind of crony-capitalism we have now.

Your comparisons to the free market are without merit. In the market not only can I choose not to buy a car from company A and instead choose to buy it from company B, but I can choose not to buy a car at all. In your system not only can I not choose to have the war on drugs, for example, provided by a different entitity, I, presumably, also cannot opt out of it entirely. If my neighbors want the cops in my bedroom, it doesn't matter how I vote.

 

[mczerone]

Libertarians believe that congress can somehow "divine" exactly how much defense, courts and police should be provided. This means that libertarians assume partial omniscience. The fact that I have to explain something so simple and straightforward to you means that your head is so far up your ass that I don't think any amount of explanation will help you understand such a simple concept.

:waves hand in front of Xero's face: These are not the libertarians you are looking for...

Most people here are intimately acquainted with Hayek's knowledge problem and Mises's Socialist calculation problem. That's why most of us don't want govt in charge of arbitration, defense, or anything else.

 

[Xerographica]

I don't expect you to respond rationally, since your method is to obfuscate and abuse. But others might be reading this so:

As I understand your proposal, each citizen would be forced to pay a certain amount of money to the State, as they do now. Failure to do so would result in the use of whatever force is necessary to extract the money, as with the current system. The amount of money to be taken would be decided by the majority of voters. So a majority of voters could decide that everyone in a certain class should have all of their wealth confiscated and given to the state. As long as that certain class was in the minority, too bad for them. The beauty of democracy.

But, the saving grace of your system is that the members of the class who have had their property confiscated could choose how the confiscated money would be spent. Of course, as a practical matter, unless the ballot were to be thousands of pages long, the choices would necessarily be broadly stated and be limited in number. The ballot could never say, for example, "pay $10,000 to buy a new garage for Sam Phelps". At most it could say "authorize the department of household renovation a billion dollars for fiscal 2013". Even that would run hundreds of pages if the government were to be the size of the current one.

Given that, the power brokering and corruption would manifest first in the selection of choices for the ballot and then in the spending itself. I see no impediment whatsoever to exactly the kind of crony-capitalism we have now.

Your comparisons to the free market are without merit. In the market not only can I choose not to buy a car from company A and instead choose to buy it from company B, but I can choose not to buy a car at all. In your system not only can I not choose to have the war on drugs, for example, provided by a different entitity, I, presumably, also cannot opt out of it entirely. If my neighbors want the cops in my bedroom, it doesn't matter how I vote.

1. Read the pragmatarianism FAQ

2. Read Rothbard

A further point: in a profound sense, no social system, whether anarchist or statist, can work at all unless most people are "good" in the sense that they are not all hell-bent upon assaulting and robbing their neighbors. If everyone were so disposed, no amount of protection, whether state or private, could succeed in staving off chaos. Furthermore, the more that people are disposed to be peaceful and not aggress against their neighbors, the more successfully any social system will work, and the fewer resources will need to be devoted to police protection. - Murray Rothbard, Society without a State

3. Learn something about public finance by actually reading the sources I linked to in the OP...one, two and three

...and then try again.

 

[Xerographica]

:waves hand in front of Xero's face: These are not the libertarians you are looking for...

Most people here are intimately acquainted with Hayek's knowledge problem and Mises's Socialist calculation problem. That's why most of us don't want govt in charge of arbitration, defense, or anything else.

Let's consider the difference in the libertarians...

Type 1: According to you I'm looking for them. They believe that congresspeople are partially omniscient. In other words, they believe that congresspeople can accurately divine the demand for defense, courts and police

Type 2: According to you I'm not looking for them. They believe that they can accurately divine the demand for coercion...

In your system not only can I not choose to have the war on drugs, for example, provided by a different entitity, I, presumably, also cannot opt out of it entirely. If my neighbors want the cops in my bedroom, it doesn't matter how I vote.

Seriously? You say that Type 2 libertarians have read Hayek...so why the fuck do they suffer from the same fatal conceit that he dedicated his life to attacking?

In other words, you're arguing that most of you suffer from the fatal conceit...yet you also argue that you're not the libertarians I'm looking for. It's one thing to perceive that somebody else is partially omniscient...it's another thing entirely to perceive that you yourself are partially omniscient. I'm certain that the latter is way worse than the former.

So yeah, if it's idiotic to assume that others are partially omniscient...then it's even more idiotic (and dangerous) to assume that you yourself are partially omniscient. Therefore, you're exactly who I'm looking for. I'm here to tell you to please drop the idiotic assumption.

The only way we can know the demand for something is by allowing people to shop for themselves. Therefore, rather than assuming you know the demands of an entire country of diverse citizens...please support giving taxpayers the freedom to shop for themselves in the public sector. We need to send the message that nobody is omniscient (partial or otherwise) and we can't loudly and clearly send this extremely priceless message if all of you are wearing electric pink turbans and divining that people in a pragmatarian system are going to be hell-bent on robbing their neighbors.

Take your turbans off and put your thinking caps on. Stop wasting your resources tilting at windmills. Let's combine our resources and send this one message as loudly and clearly as we can. It should be the one fucking thing that we all strongly agree on.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Sometimes the depth of idiocy I encounter wears my patience thin. Take your idiocy for example.

Well it never used to. Have you made a conscious decision to change your online persona, or are you taking personality-changing drugs? Seriously, you're like a totally different person.

I drew a picture to try and help you see it for yourself...

It's not a very good picture, because I don't really understand what it's trying to say. If it were accompanied by a coherent explanation, to which it was just a supplement, it could be good. But instead, it is supposed to stand on its own and communicate something to me.

I guess it is trying to say "you are attacking something, a barbaric monopoly in the provision of dispute resolution, against which you will never triumph. I wish you to attack something else, historical opinions about the Soviet Union, against which you can easily triumph." I am all for educating people about the Soviet Union's lack of thriving. I give you my blessing to go do the historical work and research which will enable you to be credible, persuasive, and thus change hearts and minds on that topic. It will take hard work, grunt work. But it will certainly be an appreciated contribution to the cause of Human Liberty! Go ye forth, and do it!

Whatever my IQ is...I'm certainly a genius compared to you.

I believe that genius is a myth.

Libertarians assume partial omniscience because they believe that there is a scope of government. Look, here's another picture for your little baby brain...



And here it is in the words of Ayn Rand....



If you need to read the proper scope of government in the words of more libertarians...then here you go...libertarianism.

Now look at the drawing I created for you in the OP...



Libertarians believe that congress can somehow "divine" exactly how much defense, courts and police should be provided. This means that libertarians assume partial omniscience. The fact that I have to explain something so simple and straightforward to you means that your head is so far up your ass that I don't think any amount of explanation will help you understand such a simple concept.

To the contrary: your explanation has solved all. Actually, I had solved it earlier myself (and just didn't bother to post about it, awaiting your reply), but if I hadn't, your explanation surely would have done the trick.

You see, I saw your picture. Then I clicked the link and saw it again, and then I even read through quite a sizable bit of the post that accompanied it, before I realized it was simply a very lengthy collection of quotes with absolutely no apparent bearing on your picture, nor the title of the post!

The problem is that the picture is too small. One can't easily read the words. Also, you need some words actually articulating what you are trying to say. As the Macintosh team learned back in the 1980s: "a word is worth a thousand pictures." Only when I clicked on the picture yet again did I understand your point. "Ahh, minarchist functions are on one side of the wall. The minarchist libertarian is still asking a central planner to do those few things for him."

And I think you have a valid point. Solution? Move the wall the rest of the way toward the individual. Stop giving the barbaric central monopoly in the funny pink hat any money at all. Make all choices ourselves. No central planning. Only decentralized choice. More and more libertarians today, by the way, accept this conclusion. They see no role whatsoever for the barbaric central monopoly state.

To be clear, under this full libertarianism, everyone is free to move the wall back away from themselves and choose as much coercion for themselves as they desire. Thus your statement:

They believe that they can accurately divine the demand for coercion.

...is not accurate. If there is a market for living in a drug-free neighborhood, neighborhoods will rise up that ban drugs. If there is a market for outlawing non-Calvinism, then neighborhoods will arise which permit only Calvinists to live there, or perhaps even to enter. Free market, baby! No central planning. No central rules. No turban. Just choice.

 

[Xerographica]

Well it never used to. Have you made a conscious decision to change your online persona, or are you taking personality-changing drugs? Seriously, you're like a totally different person.

I'm just making less effort to suffer fools gladly.

It's not a very good picture, because I don't really understand what it's trying to say. If it were accompanied by a coherent explanation, to which it was just a supplement, it could be good. But instead, it is supposed to stand on its own and communicate something to me.

Of course you don't know what it's trying to say. You're ignorant. You don't even know who S is.

You see, I saw your picture. Then I clicked the link and saw it again, and then I even read through quite a sizable bit of the post that accompanied it, before I realized it was simply a very lengthy collection of quotes with absolutely no apparent bearing on your picture, nor the title of the post!

Keep reading the passages until you understand the point of both comics.

And I think you have a valid point. Solution? Move the wall the rest of the way toward the individual. Stop giving the barbaric central monopoly in the funny pink hat any money at all. Make all choices ourselves. No central planning. Only decentralized choice. More and more libertarians today, by the way, accept this conclusion. They see no role whatsoever for the barbaric central monopoly state.

To be clear, under this full libertarianism, everyone is free to move the wall back away from themselves and choose as much coercion for themselves as they desire. Thus your statement:

...is not accurate. If there is a market for living in a drug-free neighborhood, neighborhoods will rise up that ban drugs. If there is a market for outlawing non-Calvinism, then neighborhoods will arise which permit only Calvinists to live there, or perhaps even to enter. Free market, baby! No central planning. No central rules. No turban. Just choice.

Look at you continuing to tilt at windmills. By bundling two products together you're ensuring that neither product will be "purchased". Of course you don't even realize you're doing this because you don't even know who S is.

It's ironic because you're doing what the government does. You're bundling together things that shouldn't be bundled. Except, you're doing it in the private sector which means that people aren't going to choose to buy your stupid bundle.

Unbundle your product...and sell the most valuable of the two products. You'll know which product is more valuable once you learn about S.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Nothing's bundled for me, baby! Everything's individual. Nothing but choice, and nothing but decentralization!

If that's what you're about too, then we're on the same wave. If not, then what, exactly, do you want to centralize and central-plan? Why do you think your central plan will work when everyone else's fails? What makes you so special?

 

[Xerographica]

Nothing's bundled for me, baby! Everything's individual. Nothing but choice, and nothing but decentralization!

If that's what you're about too, then we're on the same wave. If not, then what, exactly, do you want to centralize and central-plan? Why do you think your central plan will work when everyone else's fails? What makes you so special?

Yeah, you still don't know who S is.

 

[helmuth_hubener]

Yeah, you still don't know who S is.

Just answer the question, bro!

You want to decentralize everything, or not? If not, whatcha wanna central plan?