d'anconia
Member
- Joined
- Jun 22, 2007
- Messages
- 328
Well here's what I wrote for those in our Facebook group who were wondering about Chomsky's reply. If someone with a MySpace account wants to copy and paste it into that discussion that'd be great cuz I don't have a MySpace account. Don't be shy! Pretty sad that this guy is held as some Jesus-like intellectual or something when his arguments are those of a 12 year old:
(His post is in red, mine is in blue)
"Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea."
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Consent is consent. A person has the ability to opt out of any contract they want at any time but will be held accountable for opting out according to the terms of agreement. A more important question might be why someone who has no skills and no ability to make income or provide for a family has gone ahead and started a family anyway. Plus General Electric is a monolith purely because they have used lobbyists to manipulate the "would-be-for-the-public-good" bureaucrats who pass legislation in the industries within which GE competes. They also receive subsidies from the government. The government that Chomsky advocates is the same one that is used against the people because politicians can multiply their income via lobbyists (who are hired by corporations like GE).
Of course this all neglects the fact that generally people are good and willing to donate money to private charities like for this guy's family to survive so that his working for GE would be unnecessary in the first place. The government certainly won't help, in fact in the United States the poverty rate was declining by roughly 1% per year until LBJ's war on poverty stuff got passed in the (not-so) "Great Society". I find it rather curious that poverty was declining on its own before government intervention and then has really failed to produce any further decline since then.
""Dismantling of big government" sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded -- like what we're now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,....? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise."
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No it means that corporations will no longer be able to survive because they can't lean on the government for help any more. No more lobbyists pushing pro-oligopolistic legislation (including barriers to entry), no more corrupt government contracts, and no more subsidies going to those who don't need them. Every business now becomes accountable because for once the people can actually withhold funds from specific companies (whereas they can not control where their taxes dollars are given). You think corporations would mess up the environment? Right now they are protected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who, when first created, started off their career of mucking things up by making it impossible to file class-action lawsuits against polluting factories. Is there ANY entity that pollutes worse than the US government? (Hint: no). EPA are the ones who make it illegal to use bio-diesel without special permits (which cost extra money by the way) and, again, Chomsky completely ignores the role of lobbyists in politicians (WTF I expected better from the supposed smartest intellectual on Earth).
Chomsky talks about "accountability" while wholly ignoring the fact that governments are the least accountable entities on the face of the planet. You can not withdraw funds from the government. If you try to defend yourself against the US military you'll find that you're just a tad bit out-gunned. The US government has not been, and will not be, held accountable. Should we get rid of schools? No, just privatize them. Should we get rid of roads? No, just privatize them. If Chomsky really believes that R&D only happens because of the government then it's up to him to prove it. R&D with government help is more wasteful than it should be, only when a company calculates the option to be worth it should they invest in a technology.
"Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you've already mentioned.
There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power -- itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources."
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So what? Workers can strike and cause an owner to go bankrupt over night. Again Chomsky talks about private companies as if they're all Haliburtons and GM's while wholly ignoring the fact that most companies are small Ma & Pa stores that are just trying to offer a product that the public wants. He talks about the inequality between workers and owners while wholly ignoring the even bigger inequality between politicians and their constituents. He opposes evil owners (don't get me wrong, they exist) exploiting their workers while ignoring the fact that around 1/3 of the work that Americans do is given to the government without any possibility of consent.
As I've said before workers have the ability to go work for another owner. The consumers also now have the incentive to favor products of good companies over those of companies who treat their employees badly. But let me guess, Chomsky is probably wearing Nike shoes and drinking a fresh Coca-Cola while he wrote out this response.
"He is proposing a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view."
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You can always expect Chomsky to take a philosophy and automatically turn it into some sort of statism. Ron Paul doesn't advocate "ultranationalism", he just thinks if you want something to happen with respect to foreign policy that you shouldn't be forced to do something else. Everyone is more than welcome to head to Darfur to fix everything if they want but for someone to force income away from me and put it toward something that I don't believe in is completely unethical. If I disagree with the Iraq War then why should money be forced away from my hard work to fund it?
And more importantly Chomsky, AGAIN, forgets the role of lobbyists in the government (seriously WTF it's not that hard). Once you set out upon an interventionist foreign policy and certain entities make a profit off of war then you will find yourself in a perpetual war. This is what has happened in the United States. Heck even back in the Marshall Plan tons of politicians and big corporations made a ton of money by skimming off the top of taxpayer money. Nowadays we have corporations like KBI, Haliburton, Blackwater, and Lockheed-Martin, all of whom make a ton of money off of war, always pushing for war. They stand to make tons of money off of war so what do they do? They lobby the powerful politicians in Washington to push for war. The corporations get huge bullshit contracts, the politicians increase their income big-time (the amount usually is proportional to their power in the government), the lobbyists make tons of money, and of course the soldiers and taxpayers get shafted. Doesn't Chomsky find it at least somewhat dubious that the US is now in a perpetual war against an invisible enemy with no clearly stated goal and thus no real end in sight?
Plus Chomsky is ignoring the fact that foreign aid (not talking military) tends to hurt more than it helps. We send foreign aid (I'm talking in the form of taxpayer money or supplies given away by our government) to nations and what happens? The people in power on both sides skim a bunch off the top, in Africa especially the warlords take a bunch of the aid and use it to buy guns that repress the people.
Let's try another viewpoint: if you're an African farmer and a bunch of foreign aid, in the form of food, comes to your village, how does that affect you? I'll tell you how, the supply for your product has now gone up and thus you won't made a cent off of your harvest. You've been run out of business by your government and the US government. You'll switch to another job and then what happens? Foreign aid stops, for whatever reason because it can't go on indefinitely, and no one has planted any crops so the people are in danger of starvation and it still takes several months for the crops to be planted and eventually harvested. If you have been a farmer in the past but now work as a carpenter you'll probably stay carpenter because why would you farm when you could just be pushed out of business again if the government starts to give more foreign "aid"?
"There's a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn't themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being "broken" are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based -- the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we're at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?)."
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Again the hypocrisy is astounding. We should all love each other so we're going to force money away from you, at the point of a gun and with the threat of imprisonment, and give it to others. What kind of logic is this? Social security IS broken, I don't know what fantasy-land Chomsky is living in, he must not have realized at the time of typing his stuff out that the dollar is plunging (yet somehow Ron Paul knew this would happen years ago, hmmmm...) and since just about all products are based on some sort of imports (don't forget oil) then everyone's dollar-based retirements are going to get wiped out.
The bottom line still holds: if everyone thinks people *should* help each other out then there is no reason to enforce that because people will be willing to do it anyway. If private organizations picked up where things like social security left off then the people would finally have an ability to create real competition within the field of charity and thus efficiency would be optimized. The current government-based "charity" system works backwards where the worse you do the more money you get. Where on Earth do you think the incentive lies?
Chomsky's form of libertarianism ISN'T libertarianism. It's not even close.
The fact that abstraction and circumstance are so different to Chomsky is because HE HAS NO CONSISTENCY. There are NO underlying consistent logical theories that his philosophy advocates. Logic is always consistent and that's the one thing Chomsky has failed to use. He's just re-iterating what the government-sponsored media tells him to think (hint: it's all advocating more government = more funding and power going to governments).
He wouldn't support Ron Paul over Hillary? Hey that's his call but I think it goes to show how out of touch he really is.
Chomsky... great at linguistics but completely oblivious to how the political world actually works. Not one reference to lobbyists. Not one reference to corruption. The problems that Chomsky tries to focus on are the same ones that his type of "solutions" have created in the first place.
(His post is in red, mine is in blue)
"Under all circumstances? Suppose someone facing starvation accepts a contract with General Electric that requires him to work 12 hours a day locked into a factory with no health-safety regulations, no security, no benefits, etc. And the person accepts it because the alternative is that his children will starve. Fortunately, that form of savagery was overcome by democratic politics long ago. Should all of those victories for poor and working people be dismantled, as we enter into a period of private tyranny (with contracts defended by law enforcement)? Not my cup of tea."
----------------------------------------------------------------
Consent is consent. A person has the ability to opt out of any contract they want at any time but will be held accountable for opting out according to the terms of agreement. A more important question might be why someone who has no skills and no ability to make income or provide for a family has gone ahead and started a family anyway. Plus General Electric is a monolith purely because they have used lobbyists to manipulate the "would-be-for-the-public-good" bureaucrats who pass legislation in the industries within which GE competes. They also receive subsidies from the government. The government that Chomsky advocates is the same one that is used against the people because politicians can multiply their income via lobbyists (who are hired by corporations like GE).
Of course this all neglects the fact that generally people are good and willing to donate money to private charities like for this guy's family to survive so that his working for GE would be unnecessary in the first place. The government certainly won't help, in fact in the United States the poverty rate was declining by roughly 1% per year until LBJ's war on poverty stuff got passed in the (not-so) "Great Society". I find it rather curious that poverty was declining on its own before government intervention and then has really failed to produce any further decline since then.
""Dismantling of big government" sounds like a nice phrase. What does it mean? Does it mean that corporations go out of existence, because there will no longer be any guarantee of limited liability? Does it mean that all health, safety, workers rights, etc., go out the window because they were instituted by public pressures implemented through government, the only component of the governing system that is at least to some extent accountable to the public (corporations are unaccountable, apart from generally weak regulatory apparatus)? Does it mean that the economy should collapse, because basic R&D is typically publicly funded -- like what we're now using, computers and the internet? Should we eliminate roads, schools, public transportation, environmental regulation,....? Does it mean that we should be ruled by private tyrannies with no accountability to the general public, while all democratic forms are tossed out the window? Quite a few questions arise."
----------------------------------------------------------------
No it means that corporations will no longer be able to survive because they can't lean on the government for help any more. No more lobbyists pushing pro-oligopolistic legislation (including barriers to entry), no more corrupt government contracts, and no more subsidies going to those who don't need them. Every business now becomes accountable because for once the people can actually withhold funds from specific companies (whereas they can not control where their taxes dollars are given). You think corporations would mess up the environment? Right now they are protected by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) who, when first created, started off their career of mucking things up by making it impossible to file class-action lawsuits against polluting factories. Is there ANY entity that pollutes worse than the US government? (Hint: no). EPA are the ones who make it illegal to use bio-diesel without special permits (which cost extra money by the way) and, again, Chomsky completely ignores the role of lobbyists in politicians (WTF I expected better from the supposed smartest intellectual on Earth).
Chomsky talks about "accountability" while wholly ignoring the fact that governments are the least accountable entities on the face of the planet. You can not withdraw funds from the government. If you try to defend yourself against the US military you'll find that you're just a tad bit out-gunned. The US government has not been, and will not be, held accountable. Should we get rid of schools? No, just privatize them. Should we get rid of roads? No, just privatize them. If Chomsky really believes that R&D only happens because of the government then it's up to him to prove it. R&D with government help is more wasteful than it should be, only when a company calculates the option to be worth it should they invest in a technology.
"Rights that are enforced by state police power, as you've already mentioned.
There are huge differences between workers and owners. Owners can fire and intimidate workers, not conversely. just for starters. Putting them on a par is effectively supporting the rule of owners over workers, with the support of state power -- itself largely under owner control, given concentration of resources."
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what? Workers can strike and cause an owner to go bankrupt over night. Again Chomsky talks about private companies as if they're all Haliburtons and GM's while wholly ignoring the fact that most companies are small Ma & Pa stores that are just trying to offer a product that the public wants. He talks about the inequality between workers and owners while wholly ignoring the even bigger inequality between politicians and their constituents. He opposes evil owners (don't get me wrong, they exist) exploiting their workers while ignoring the fact that around 1/3 of the work that Americans do is given to the government without any possibility of consent.
As I've said before workers have the ability to go work for another owner. The consumers also now have the incentive to favor products of good companies over those of companies who treat their employees badly. But let me guess, Chomsky is probably wearing Nike shoes and drinking a fresh Coca-Cola while he wrote out this response.
"He is proposing a form of ultranationalism, in which we are concerned solely with our preserving our own wealth and extraordinary advantages, getting out of the UN, rejecting any international prosecution of US criminals (for aggressive war, for example), etc. Apart from being next to meaningless, the idea is morally unacceptable, in my view."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
You can always expect Chomsky to take a philosophy and automatically turn it into some sort of statism. Ron Paul doesn't advocate "ultranationalism", he just thinks if you want something to happen with respect to foreign policy that you shouldn't be forced to do something else. Everyone is more than welcome to head to Darfur to fix everything if they want but for someone to force income away from me and put it toward something that I don't believe in is completely unethical. If I disagree with the Iraq War then why should money be forced away from my hard work to fund it?
And more importantly Chomsky, AGAIN, forgets the role of lobbyists in the government (seriously WTF it's not that hard). Once you set out upon an interventionist foreign policy and certain entities make a profit off of war then you will find yourself in a perpetual war. This is what has happened in the United States. Heck even back in the Marshall Plan tons of politicians and big corporations made a ton of money by skimming off the top of taxpayer money. Nowadays we have corporations like KBI, Haliburton, Blackwater, and Lockheed-Martin, all of whom make a ton of money off of war, always pushing for war. They stand to make tons of money off of war so what do they do? They lobby the powerful politicians in Washington to push for war. The corporations get huge bullshit contracts, the politicians increase their income big-time (the amount usually is proportional to their power in the government), the lobbyists make tons of money, and of course the soldiers and taxpayers get shafted. Doesn't Chomsky find it at least somewhat dubious that the US is now in a perpetual war against an invisible enemy with no clearly stated goal and thus no real end in sight?
Plus Chomsky is ignoring the fact that foreign aid (not talking military) tends to hurt more than it helps. We send foreign aid (I'm talking in the form of taxpayer money or supplies given away by our government) to nations and what happens? The people in power on both sides skim a bunch off the top, in Africa especially the warlords take a bunch of the aid and use it to buy guns that repress the people.
Let's try another viewpoint: if you're an African farmer and a bunch of foreign aid, in the form of food, comes to your village, how does that affect you? I'll tell you how, the supply for your product has now gone up and thus you won't made a cent off of your harvest. You've been run out of business by your government and the US government. You'll switch to another job and then what happens? Foreign aid stops, for whatever reason because it can't go on indefinitely, and no one has planted any crops so the people are in danger of starvation and it still takes several months for the crops to be planted and eventually harvested. If you have been a farmer in the past but now work as a carpenter you'll probably stay carpenter because why would you farm when you could just be pushed out of business again if the government starts to give more foreign "aid"?
"There's a lot more. Take Social Security. If he means what he says literally, then widows, orphans, the disabled who didn't themselves pay into Social Security should not benefit (or of course those awful illegal aliens). His claims about SS being "broken" are just false. He also wants to dismantle it, by undermining the social bonds on which it is based -- the real meaning of offering younger workers other options, instead of having them pay for those who are retired, on the basis of a communal decision based on the principle that we should have concern for others in need. He wants people to be able to run around freely with assault rifles, on the basis of a distorted reading of the Second Amendment (and while we're at it, why not abolish the whole raft of constitutional provisions and amendments, since they were all enacted in ways he opposes?)."
-------------------------------------------------------------------
Again the hypocrisy is astounding. We should all love each other so we're going to force money away from you, at the point of a gun and with the threat of imprisonment, and give it to others. What kind of logic is this? Social security IS broken, I don't know what fantasy-land Chomsky is living in, he must not have realized at the time of typing his stuff out that the dollar is plunging (yet somehow Ron Paul knew this would happen years ago, hmmmm...) and since just about all products are based on some sort of imports (don't forget oil) then everyone's dollar-based retirements are going to get wiped out.
The bottom line still holds: if everyone thinks people *should* help each other out then there is no reason to enforce that because people will be willing to do it anyway. If private organizations picked up where things like social security left off then the people would finally have an ability to create real competition within the field of charity and thus efficiency would be optimized. The current government-based "charity" system works backwards where the worse you do the more money you get. Where on Earth do you think the incentive lies?
Chomsky's form of libertarianism ISN'T libertarianism. It's not even close.
The fact that abstraction and circumstance are so different to Chomsky is because HE HAS NO CONSISTENCY. There are NO underlying consistent logical theories that his philosophy advocates. Logic is always consistent and that's the one thing Chomsky has failed to use. He's just re-iterating what the government-sponsored media tells him to think (hint: it's all advocating more government = more funding and power going to governments).
He wouldn't support Ron Paul over Hillary? Hey that's his call but I think it goes to show how out of touch he really is.
Chomsky... great at linguistics but completely oblivious to how the political world actually works. Not one reference to lobbyists. Not one reference to corruption. The problems that Chomsky tries to focus on are the same ones that his type of "solutions" have created in the first place.
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