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

[sunsense]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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 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]

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]

[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]].

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

 

[Mini-Me]

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

 

[Mini-Me]

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, 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]

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]].

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 or this. I see you're incapable of that, though. Good luck in whatever it is you do around here.

 

[AceNZ]

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]

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 or this.

To the first of which I say: this. 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]

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]

i see troll people...

 

[AceNZ]

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]

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]

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]

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]

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.