OSSR: John Wick's Libertarian Fantasy Utopia

[ArmorClassZero]

You know, I hesitated for just a second on that line, thinking, "Do I need to put something like 'or comparable resources' or 'of equivalent value' or something." And then I thought, no, they'll get it, they're sharp.

My suggestion is that after someone has just taken you to the rhetorical woodshed for seeming to imply that you believe in a zero sum world that you should not confirm that you think you live in a zero sum world.
[...]
Which is impressive. Like, most socialists don't really mind that there are examples of successful cafes or movie franchises that demonstrate advantages for competition. Because socialists don't normally claim that we literally have to socialize everything. But Libertarians do claim that we can't socialize anything, which means that even a single counter example shoots down the entire theory.

That does not confirm belief in a zero-sum world: its acknowledgement of the Govt setting a (arbitrary) price on the products and services they offer, which must be arbitrary because they did not allow market forces to discover what the price of something is actually worth. And the actual cost of said utility, product, service, whatever, is masked by paying for the product indirectly through taxes, and then directly whenever you pay your utility bills, which in many places goes to the utility company which is the only provider in the area because the Govt has granted them a monopoly.

Your counter-example doesn't "shoot down the entire theory" it just serves to point out that the effects of Govt involvement in a market are NOT so unbearable that consumers can't tolerate it. Saying, "we currently pay a trivial amount for this thing offered by the Govt" does not disprove that the thing would be even cheaper if private enterprise were allowed to operate. But it does prove that, given the Govt as a competitor or agency with exclusive powers and an unlimited budget, the number of competitors in that field or market is necessarily reduced. How can it be otherwise? How can all but the largest of corporations compete against the largest corporation of them all?

I left a meme of Thomas Sowell saying, "How come the people who think we can't afford X, Y, and Z are THE SAME PEOPLE who think we will be able to afford X, Y, and Z plus a Govt bureaucracy?" Why do you guys believe that to be the case? Frank, you're a doctor. The Libertarians and Austrian School of Econ. say that, part of the reason of the rising costs of health-care is that, at nearly every stage, so much paperwork and red-tape and Govt bureaucracy in general must be dealt with. This increases wait times, among other things, and necessitates having a swarm of office clerks, and increases the costs at every level. Is this not your experience?

It's interesting you mention Mad Max. Did you watch Fury Road? Did you notice that the guy with all the water, food, and gas was the government?

@DeadDM: Why is private ownership the highest ideal? I would say, cheekily, that because for 98% of human history, private ownership has generally not been recognized to be the case: most of human history is some form of Govt tyranny - whether that take the form of the local bandit clan who shakes down some tiny villages every so often promising 'protection' from bigger bandit gangs, or whether it takes the form of supreme leader god-king dictators, their regimes, and their empires, or everything in between.

Also, the collective property of your neighborhood... is your collective private property, no? You and your neighborhood are an association of mutually consenting individuals.

@Mask: Your question, and DeadDM's answer, work both ways. Arguably, for every person that becomes a Libertarian, there are 100s more (probably 1Ks) who become Leftists, Liberals, Progressives, often for the same reasons: "I can't believe Republicans/Conservatives/Right-Wingers are so abundant - but stupidity and evil always is. We, the good guys, are the underdogs, and we have an uphill battle to fight for human freedom and dignity against the corporate oligarchs and their hordes of thralls and greedy minions who want to put us all back in chains and regress humanity. If only they would see reason! Don't they see they're holding humanity back? I mean, it's just so obvious that all we have to do to solve X, Y, and Z problem is have a Govt that works for us!" etc. etc.

[deaddmwalking]

collective private property,

You keep putting impossible to reconcile words next to each other as if you're incapable of comprehending even the most basic aspects of your argument.

Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property, which is owned by a state entity; and from collective (or cooperative) property, which is owned by a group of non-governmental entities.

If property is 'collectively owned' then we all have duties and obligations to the other owners and they to us. The process of governance (whether as a nation, a company, or an association) helps us define and enforce those duties and obligations. Demanding the rights and privileges without acceptance of the duties and obligations makes you, quite obviously, an asshole.

The folks who have worked hard to maintain and develop the collective property have a vested interest in ensuring that everyone contributes - because if you could BENEFIT without contributing, selfish motives indicate that you SHOULD; but if everyone does so, it makes it worse for everyone. It's the Tragedy of the Commons.

Every single one of your 'points' is easily refutable by a real life example. Did you know there are countries with government provided health care that are LESS EXPENSIVE than the US Health Care system? How is that possible with all of our competition? Surely not all of those costs are because the government regulates health care providers? Surely you are not arguing that every auto-mechanic should be allowed to perform open-heart surgery with the assumption that if they're not very good they won't stay in business long?

If you take ANY SINGLE ONE OF YOUR PROPOSALS and you actually follow the thought to the logical conclusion, any reasonable person would discard it.

Try to answer these two questions with a yes or no.

Should meat packers be able to put whatever they want into our sausages including deadly chemicals?

Should auto mechanics be allowed to perform open heart surgery in their garages?

[Libertad]

Incidentally, this is one reason the Govt hasn't been controlling the border: all these immigrants are potential future tax-payers to keep this scheme going.

So um, what about all those ICE internment camps and the human rights abuses coming out of them, particularly impacting children?

Or the fact that our Attorney General claimed that they can imprison legal asylum seekers without hearings?

Can we at least get an #abolishice out of you?

[jt]

Why do people of, let's just say a nerdly persuasion gravitate so hard towards Libertarianism?

Two major reasons. First, from before:

I do have one good thing to say about libertarianism: It is probably the simplest theory of government. You can start with just property rights and with only a little bit of tortured logic you can bootstrap that into some semblance of most other rights. That's pretty neat.

Libertarianism is clever. Simple basis, mostly-logical extensions. Engineers (and whoo boy is libertarianism popular with engineers) naturally fall into the trap of thinking the simple clever solution must be the correct solution, until experience beats it out of them. Then they either become jaded engineers who think no simple solutions are possible, or good engineers who see that simplicity is preferable but not as important as respecting the problem. Since the primary cure is experience, and people don't get to make toy societies to see whether their ideas work (and engineers don't read history/sociology books because they're "soft" sciences), they never get the experience.

Second reason: We all grow up immersed in the mythology of capitalism. The free market provides the best solution, the freer the market the freer the people, entrepreneurship is noble and the source of all advancement. These facts are capitalism, which is Good, nevermind whatever those commies are saying about who owns what. Despite the fact that we live in a free market society with entrepeneurship, which is capitalism, which is Good, bad things somehow happen. How do we reconcile this? The laziest, easiest way is to say that we're not doing the good things hard enough. The markets must be more free, all problems are caused by the markets not being free enough. Explanation for real-world problems acquired; no change in core beliefs required.

[ArmorClassZero]

Did you know there are countries with government provided health care that are LESS EXPENSIVE than the US Health Care system? How is that possible with all of our competition? Surely not all of those costs are because the government regulates health care providers?

Surely you are not arguing that every auto-mechanic should be allowed to perform open-heart surgery with the assumption that if they're not very good they won't stay in business long?

Try to answer these two questions with a yes or no.

Should meat packers be able to put whatever they want into our sausages including deadly chemicals?

Should auto mechanics be allowed to perform open heart surgery in their garages?

Line By Line:

Are you including the expense the citizens of those countries pay in taxes + medical bills?

Yes. Although I'm not sure what kind of person goes to an auto-mechanic for open-heart surgery, but ya'know, to each his own.

Yes. Although it's a bit of an odd business plan to kill your customers. *rubs hands greedily* "This quarter, we'll put concrete into our sausages. We expect to see a 10% increase in market shares by the end of next quarter."

Yes. Who are you to tell Joe Dirt he can't get that open-heart surgery? If he agrees to it, more power to him. Some of us would call it natural selection, but I'm going to wish him a speedy recovery all the same.

[ArmorClassZero]

Incidentally, this is one reason the Govt hasn't been controlling the border: all these immigrants are potential future tax-payers to keep this scheme going.

So um, what about all those ICE internment camps and the human rights abuses coming out of them, particularly impacting children?

Or the fact that our Attorney General claimed that they can imprison legal asylum seekers without hearings?

Can we at least get an #abolishice out of you?

[deaddmwalking]

Did you know there are countries with government provided health care that are LESS EXPENSIVE than the US Health Care system? How is that possible with all of our competition? Surely not all of those costs are because the government regulates health care providers?

Are you including the expense the citizens of those countries pay in taxes + medical bills?

Yes. Here's a link to the tax burdens of various countries. The US tax rate is 32%; Norway is 36%. Here's a link that indicates Americans spend another 6% of their household income on Health Care. That means we have to spend 38% (compared to 36%) in taxes + health care compared to Norway. In Norway, everyone under the age of 16 has free health care (ie, they don't pay for it directly). Everyone over the age of 16 pays the first $240 of healthcare they receive annually. That is approximately 1/10 of 1% and I included it when I rounded their tax rate up to 36%.

Do you have an answer about how higher taxes are bad in this case?

Did you know that the 'happiness index' also correlates to having the necessities handled by government services?

According to the 2019 Happiness Report, Finland is the happiest country in the world, with Denmark, Norway, Iceland, and The Netherlands holding the next top positions. The World Happiness Report 2018 ranks 156 countries by their happiness levels, and 117 countries by the happiness of their immigrants.

You're not arguing for people being healthier and you're not arguing for people being happier. What are you arguing for again?

Surely you are not arguing that every auto-mechanic should be allowed to perform open-heart surgery with the assumption that if they're not very good they won't stay in business long?

Yes. Although I'm not sure what kind of person goes to an auto-mechanic for open-heart surgery, but ya'know, to each his own.

One important aspect of government regulation is that in many careers - especially the ones where life and death is on the line - people need to show that they're actually able to do the things they say they can do. We know that people who are unqualified actually do the things they shouldn't do if they're permitted to do so because that's the world we used to live in. That's historical fact.

Should meat packers be able to put whatever they want into our sausages including deadly chemicals?

Yes. Although it's a bit of an odd business plan to kill your customers. *rubs hands greedily* "This quarter, we'll put concrete into our sausages. We expect to see a 10% increase in market shares by the end of next quarter."

Again, this is the world we used to live in. This was historical fact.

It's not hard to show HOW we're better off with government regulation. The ways are myriad.

You seem to believe that if the government DIDN'T mandate these things that people would continue to do them ANYWAY even though you also indicate that they're an expensive burden getting in the way of actually doing business. Can't you see that those are incompatible? If it's burdensome, people won't do it if they're not required to. If not doing it results in literal deaths you are arguing that a few more dollars in quarterly profit is worth significantly more costs to consumers (testing all of my food for chemicals that used to be illegal - assuming even that the kit I buy is of sufficient quality without government intercession that it COULD detect the presence of these chemicals). Why is that better than what we have now? Oh right, it's not.

Stop being crazy.

[Username17]

I left a meme of Thomas Sowell saying, "How come the people who think we can't afford X, Y, and Z are THE SAME PEOPLE who think we will be able to afford X, Y, and Z plus a Govt bureaucracy?" Why do you guys believe that to be the case? Frank, you're a doctor. The Libertarians and Austrian School of Econ. say that, part of the reason of the rising costs of health-care is that, at nearly every stage, so much paperwork and red-tape and Govt bureaucracy in general must be dealt with. This increases wait times, among other things, and necessitates having a swarm of office clerks, and increases the costs at every level. Is this not your experience?

I'm glad you asked! Turns out that public healthcare is much cheaper than private health care. It's not remotely close. When you look at cross-country data, there's an almost linear relationship between the size of the private interests in healthcare provision and the cost for achieved health outcomes. That is, if you compare two countries with similar overall health achievement, the industry uses up more of GDP the less government is involved. So the United Kingdom has a National Health Service which makes it the most communist of any Western country and it gets very slightly better overall outcomes to the United States, which has the most capitalist healthcare sector of any Western country - but the UK does that on 7.5% of GDP and the US takes 17.5% of GDP to get pretty much the same thing.

There's a lot of reasons why that is. Most basically you have a bureaucracy whether your have a government or not. So really the question is, "Why do you think we can afford X, Y, Z, a Bureaucracy, and a layer of profit taking?" In terms of services provided, profit is waste. The more layers of profit taking there are, the less you get for your money.

But it's also a question of adversarialism and competition. There are things that can be effective for (burger joints, for example), but in healthcare there's no meaningful market. As a doctor I tell people what services they need and I provide the services because I'm a medical expert and my patients generally are not. In the US, the competition isn't between service providers, it's between insurance companies and hospitals. In the US, hospitals must have vast bureaucracies of secretaries and lawyers sending nasty grams to insurance companies demanding payment while the insurance companies have their own armies of secretaries and lawyers combing medical records and contracts for loopholes they can use to deny payment. That shit all costs money. And that's why an MRI in the United States costs $2000 and an MRI in the UK costs £130 ($168 at current exchange rates).

Austrian Economics would suggest that a more communist system like the UK and Cuba would be subject to massive cost overruns and more capitalist systems like the US and Switzerland would be svelt and cost-efficient. This is the literal opposite of observed reality. Actually communist systems are the most cost efficient on Earth and the most capitalist are coincidentally the most expensive. By an incredibly huge and undeniable amount.

It's important to understand that not only are the Austrians totally wrong about how capitalism in the health sector can operate, they are also wrong about how government run healthcare services operate. In reality, the biggest problem of communist healthcare in the UK is that the government is too frugal. The UK is the most efficient 1st world country, but it also has an underfunded healthcare sector. The government can keep costs under control and it does so to excess. The people continually vote to keep costs and taxes lower than the optimum and the health sector suffers for it. Not enough to make the UK have a lower life expectancy than the US, but enough that healthcare outcomes are better in somewhat more profligate countries like France and the Netherlands.

Let that sink in: in the real world we have an actual example of communist healthcare where the government owns the means of production. And literally the biggest problem with it is that the system is too good at keeping costs down.

Honestly, socialists have a lot to be proud of. And they can and do dunk on Libertarians with many different public utilities. Socialized libraries, parks, fire departments, mass transit, roads, and healthcare are all really solid. But the bottom line is that very few socialists are extremists who deny that there's any place for the private sector. You could find a dozen or a thousand examples where the private sector worked better than the public sector by some metric or another and it wouldn't phase a socialist. It just isn't a problem for the socialist worldview that competition makes better burgers. But Libertarianism is an extremist viewpoint. Finding even one public good that functions better in public hands than in private ones destroys the entire Libertarian argument. Tap water is the mic drop. The fact that public tap water is superior to privatized alternatives is the end of the conversation. Libertarianism is falsified completely with that single data point.

-Username17

[Libertad]

I have to applaud you on using a very roundabout way of dodging the question which can be read in a myraid of ways depending upon the political persuasion of the viewer. This frame is a line from the movie Starship Troopers, based off of a book written by Robert E. Heinlen when he was going through a pseudo-fascist frame of mind.

You didn't say #abolishice because that is a hashtag widely associated with the left, and it's common in alt-right circles to compare Latinos and immigrants to literal invading aliens, be they Zerg or Arachnids.

On the other hand, this response can also be read as a Libertarian argument for violent resistance against ICE for their big government tyranny, but given your earlier posts arguing for MORE big government when it comes to immigration, the alt-right "being correct from a Libertarian point of view," and repeating the "only white countries are being flooded with immigrants" which itself is repeated by bigoted groups, this last part may not necessarily be the case.

So no memes this time. Can we get a straight #abolishice?

[hyzmarca]

. We know that people who are unqualified actually do the things they shouldn't do if they're permitted to do so because that's the world we used to live in. That's historical fact.

Used to? Historical?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... slaughter/

[Libertad]

Someone caused the forum column thingy to squeeze up just now. I temporarily edited the Starship Troopers meme quote from my last post, and things were still the same so I don't think it's on my end. It might be DDMWalking or hyzmarca's post if I had to guess.

[jt]

hyzmarca's post has an extra unquote tag.

[pragma]

Man, quoting movie fascists while arguing that the Libertarian world view isn't fascist is a bold and absolutely baffling play.

[Iduno]

Man, quoting movie fascists while arguing that the Libertarian world view isn't fascist is a bold and absolutely baffling play.

Not really. AC0 has at no point argued in good faith, and the gaggle of utter dipshits here keep trying to get into a reasonable discussion over it. If they're all too fucking stupid to realize they're being trolled, just keep leaning into it. Bunch of goddamn morons are making a teenage libertarian look good.

[Libertad]

Man, quoting movie fascists while arguing that the Libertarian world view isn't fascist is a bold and absolutely baffling play.

Not really. AC0 has at no point argued in good faith, and the gaggle of utter dipshits here keep trying to get into a reasonable discussion over it. If they're all too fucking stupid to realize they're being trolled, just keep leaning into it. Bunch of goddamn morons are making a teenage libertarian look good.

Good faith or no, a continual vigilance is required to avoid alt-right and crypto-fascist voices from making their way into communities and fandoms. While touched upon briefly, the tie between Libertarian voices and racism has mostly discussed the legacies of slavery and Native American genocides by other posters. I was pretty much the first person in this thread to point out AC0's anti-Latino prejudice in a big way. And furthermore highlighting how even his rhetoric is misaligned with his own supposed value system.

It wasn't long before this topic the Den had some other poster use the phrase "chimping out" and argue that the term anti-Semite was brewed by (((shifty-eyed Neo-Marxists))). While said poster was banned and this board is more left on many issues, the no-holds barred "you're welcome to personally attack and insult people's intelligence" has been a convenient excuse for anti-SJW voices to prop themselves up as 'free voices' unlike the 'triggered thin-skinned snowflakes.'

Maybe some other poster would've tackled the anti-immigrant and anti-Latino stuff in due time, but making these posts doesn't take an appreciable amount of time in my day to day life and I don't lose anything for doing so. If it can de-legitimize an alt-right voice and their talking points, there's no downside. Otherwise, a potential downside is that other bigots can read from the posts that you can get away with certain kinds of racism while everyone else is hung up on taxes and hypothetical no-government, all-corporate dystopias.

[DSMatticus]

Man, quoting movie fascists while arguing that the Libertarian world view isn't fascist is a bold and absolutely baffling play.

Not really. AC0 has at no point argued in good faith, and the gaggle of utter dipshits here keep trying to get into a reasonable discussion over it. If they're all too fucking stupid to realize they're being trolled, just keep leaning into it. Bunch of goddamn morons are making a teenage libertarian look good.

Absolutely no one here is in danger of making AC0 look good.

Welcome to the Den. We like to beat on dead horses until they run away. Surprisingly, they sometimes do. I get less fun out of than I used to, but we haven't had a libertarian in awhile - I honestly thought that breed had basically died out. It's 2019 - you don't really have to come up with excuses to be a fascist anymore. They sell hats.

But mostly these discussions are for us and the various idiots who wonder in are just an excuse to articulate arguments we already enjoy articulating. It's interesting to observe that the 'father of capitalism' was a unionist who complained that the government and the media alike were overly sympathetic to plutocrats. I'm sure someone here had never seen those particular Adam Smith quotes, and hopefully found it vaguely interesting to see that early capitalist thinkers have a better idea of what capitalism entails than the assholes who've had two hundred years to refine the concept. Capitalist thought is quite literally centuries of unprogress back towards state mercantilism held at bay only by the rise of socialism and the subsequent need to compromise with the working class in order to hold the guillotines at bay.

[MGuy]

Man, quoting movie fascists while arguing that the Libertarian world view isn't fascist is a bold and absolutely baffling play.

Not really. AC0 has at no point argued in good faith, and the gaggle of utter dipshits here keep trying to get into a reasonable discussion over it. If they're all too fucking stupid to realize they're being trolled, just keep leaning into it. Bunch of goddamn morons are making a teenage libertarian look good.

Troll logic has it that if you say something stupid and then get called out for it you make the people calling you stupid look bad. That's not how it actually looks for people who aren't trolls or teenagers in real life. In real life people who aren't brain dead can recognize that someone who posts idiotic screeds aren't to be taken seriously. Beyond that though, if you're reading the responses to AC0 no one here really thinks he's to be taken seriously. AC0 however isn't the only libertarian in existence and it is instructive and valuable to lay out full counter arguments to libertarian arguments. This may be the internet and the internet is full of the absurd, but people in real life who are in positions of power do really take these stances.

[Thaluikhain]

A couple of pages back I mentioned the Industrial Revolution, and the working conditions then. I'd also add a bit later, when London got it's sewer system, because the lack of one was making living in the city intolerable (fr rich people who could go elsewhere). It wasn't a bunch of rich people who solved the problem (and London had no shortage of those unhappy with the smell), nothing was done until London's Metropolitan Board of Works under Bazalgette pushed for and got a building project justified by the government.

(This sort of thing never seems to come up in steampunk, it's seemingly all brass cogs mixed with unexplained magic lightning stuff)

This frame is a line from the movie Starship Troopers, based off of a book written by Robert E. Heinlen when he was going through a pseudo-fascist frame of mind.

Going through? That wasn't his normal state of mind?

[Libertad]

Going through? That wasn't his normal state of mind?

My recollection of Heinlen is that his political views went through many, many changes over the course of his life.

[Chamomile]

The general consensus on Heinlein is that just about every novel he wrote advocated for a different political philosophy. I haven't read enough of his work to know if that's true.

Related to immigration, Zach Weinsersmith, famous for being the SMBC guy and for not being the XKCD guy, has released a non-fiction comic book about open borders and has implored his audience to order it today if they're ordering it at all, in order to help boost its visibility on bestsellers lists and the like. Figured I'd drop a link here and maybe get him a few more sales in that window.

[OgreBattle]

Heinlein went through lots of political changes in his life as he lived through some pretty dramatic political shifts. I take his novels as "the ideal kind of people needed for different political systems to work"

[Iduno]

Troll logic has it that if you say something stupid and then get called out for it you make the people calling you stupid look bad. That's not how it actually looks for people who aren't trolls or teenagers in real life. In real life people who aren't brain dead can recognize that someone who posts idiotic screeds aren't to be taken seriously. Beyond that though, if you're reading the responses to AC0 no one here really thinks he's to be taken seriously. AC0 however isn't the only libertarian in existence and it is instructive and valuable to lay out full counter arguments to libertarian arguments. This may be the internet and the internet is full of the absurd, but people in real life who are in positions of power do really take these stances.

Yes, but there is a line between showing people an argument for illustrative purposes, and continuing the argument for your own purposes (taking the entire situation too seriously). With political and economic situations being the way they are, I'm not surprised the place is getting more shouty (myself included). If you're going to be off-topic for long, at least do it in an entertaining fashion.

Heinlein went through lots of political changes in his life as he lived through some pretty dramatic political shifts. I take his novels as "the ideal kind of people needed for different political systems to work"

Political system, or sexual relationship that society normally frowns upon (incest and/or sex with/between children). Could be where his readers keep getting those ideas.

[ArmorClassZero]

Well, I'm off to my freshman high-school class Capitalism & You 102, can I get you guys to recommend some anti-capitalist reading (besides Marx, of course) so that I can refute those dumb-dumb corporate shills teachers?

Three (3) titles per User, please, and only the best of the best reading.

[The Adventurer's Almanac]

Go read The Ego and its Own and come back when you've learned something.

[Mord]

Libertarianism is clever. Simple basis, mostly-logical extensions. Engineers (and whoo boy is libertarianism popular with engineers) naturally fall into the trap of thinking the simple clever solution must be the correct solution, until experience beats it out of them. Then they either become jaded engineers who think no simple solutions are possible, or good engineers who see that simplicity is preferable but not as important as respecting the problem. Since the primary cure is experience, and people don't get to make toy societies to see whether their ideas work (and engineers don't read history/sociology books because they're "soft" sciences), they never get the experience.

Apparently the intersection of engineers and woo is sufficiently well-observed phenomenon that it has its own RationalWiki article. It's mostly focused on creationism, but Objectivism and Flat Eartherism pop up in there as well.