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Can someone tell me what kind of a libertarian Rand Paul is pretending to be in this clip? Because I don't think any self respecting decent human being can support what he's saying.
Mr. Paul uses the false analogy logical fallacy when he equates the belief in the right to healthcare to the belief in slavery. The two scenarios are substantially different therefore the same conclusions cannot be logically drawn.
Personally, I think he comes off as a drama queen in his use of the false analogy, & when he speaks about the implied threat of force to conscript his services, it becomes difficult to take what he is saying seriously. The incredulous laughter didn't help his argument.
Uncertain if it's hypocrisy or chutzpacrisy when he discusses his hospital privileges? The other Physician's testimony came off as extremely reasonable & rational, she demonstrated she takes the Hippocratic Oath seriously.
America changes the meaning of every political term, liberalism is somehow 'left', communism means state control, socialism taxation not worker ownership (though thats common in Europe too) Of course I know about Chomsky, though i'm more of a Bookchin disciple:
I never saw all the clips together like that? Nice find, thanks & respect, I appreciate. I'm not familiar with Mr. Bookchin? I'll check him out.
& just curious, what UK political type is comparable to the US Right Wing Libertarian? Or, is there one?
There is really no such thing as 'libertarian' in the uk (maybe UKIP MP Douglas Carswell, though he's anti immigration) left libertarians call ourselves anarchists, and anarcho-capitalism simply isn't a thing. Maybe we're just not dumb enough to think you can have capitalism without the state?
In practice though i'd say conservatives, they're fairly liberal socially except with immigration (rich immigrants are ok, but no others) and the snoopers charter (police state here we come.) Economically however their policies are to sell off all state assets to the rich, small state free market ideology except when it doesn't suit them, smash the unions, destroy workers rights, reduce democratic accountability and give power to the aristocracy.
Last edited by archineer; 04-02-2016 at 07:10 AM..
Mr. Paul uses the false analogy logical fallacy when he equates the belief in the right to healthcare to the belief in slavery. The two scenarios are substantially different therefore the same conclusions cannot be logically drawn.
Personally, I think he comes off as a drama queen in his use of the false analogy, & when he speaks about the implied threat of force to conscript his services, it becomes difficult to take what he is saying seriously. The incredulous laughter didn't help his argument.
Uncertain if it's hypocrisy or chutzpacrisy when he discusses his hospital privileges? The other Physician's testimony came off as extremely reasonable & rational, she demonstrated she takes the Hippocratic Oath seriously.
You missed the point. Which is laughable since it was a simple explanation. Government doesn't own you OR your work. Simple enough to understand except from those with a twisted agenda.
Didn't read all the comments, but the libertarian I like the most is the type who really knows the meaning behind these words "Please leave me alone because I have left you alone."
You missed the point. Which is laughable since it was a simple explanation. Government doesn't own you OR your work. Simple enough to understand except from those with a twisted agenda.
The notion that people can change the government, but not corporations, is nonsense. Besides the obvious, the voting power that comes with stock ownership, people can change corporations by public pressure, which you can see in numerous examples:
-Mozilla's CEO being forced to resign
-Nike being pressure to improve conditions in its overseas factories
-Pressure on tech companies to publish diversity numbers and hire more non-Asian minorities which has resulted in numerous diversity initiatives
-Walmart raising wages to $10.00 an hour
-Several major tax inversion deals that were canceled after public backlash
-The Big 3 automakers being forced to improve quality after people started buying Hondas and Toyotas
The easiest way to change corporations is by voting with your dollar.
If I have a problem with Kroger, I can shop at Meijer.
If I have a problem with Amazon, I can order from Jet.com or any number of other more specialized online retailers.
If I have a problem with Lenovo latops, I can start buying HP laptops.
If I don't like Netflix, I can switch to Hulu
If I don't like my employer, I can put my resume on Indeed and LinkedIn and find another job.
With corporations, so long as the government is doing its job in preventing monopolies, fraud, etc. then you have choices. With the government, on the other hand, you don't have a choice and you have little to no recourse if you don't like something. Having one vote, in a country of 320,000,000 people, to give to either terrible candidate A or terrible candidate B does not give you any real power over what the government does. Don't want to pay higher taxes to fund "free" college education? Too bad. Tyranny of the majority. They voted and decided for you.
He goes on to say that the market doesn't provide you choices because it doesn't provide you all of the options you may want (like mass transportation). Yet when a government decides to install a subway system, and you protest against it and vote against it and write a letter to your congresspeople against it, and they still do it anyway, you have no choice. You have to pay for it, whether you want it or not. He bemoans markets not providing you enough choices, yet apparently has no problem with government making choices for you that you don't want, or rather, taking choices away, as that money that you mean instead have spent on something else, now must be spent on the subway you don't use.
Then he talks about advertisers using advertisements in an attempt "to create an uninformed consumer who will make an irrational choice." This is problem, why? And what is the solution? To ban advertisements? To overthrow capitalism to save you from the tyranny of Ronald McDonald trying to convince you to buy a Big Mac? I don't like advertisements either, that's why I don't have cable and I have ad blocker installed.
Next he moves on to greed. The problem with capitalism is that it's based on greed! No, that is why capitalism works. Greed is another word for self-interest. Capitalism works because people are making decisions in their own self-interest which generally creates economic efficiency. Economic efficiency is what creates wealth. It doesn't fight human nature, it instead uses it to the system's advantage.
"It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest."
Chomsky's utopian fantasy economic system that has never existed anywhere in the world will not work because it fights human nature. Like all far-left ideas.
Of course, this is from a multi-millionaire who funnels money into trusts to protect that money from the government government taxation. As always, "greed" is only when someone has more money than you, and is not willing to share it with you. Also coming from a guy who more or less denied the atrocities that were happening with Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia and made excuses for them, claimed it was all western propaganda, etc.
Last edited by EugeneOnegin; 04-02-2016 at 01:49 PM..
Chomsky's utopian fantasy economic system that has never existed anywhere in the world will not work because it fights human nature. Like all far-left ideas.
I could spend time responding to all of your misrepresentations, but i'll just respond to this for now because i'm rather busy.
Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist, which has existed, during the Spanish revolution. It was actually highly successful for the three years it was in operation, so successful in fact that fascists, western governments and the communists all got together to destroy the movement by military force, before they had their war with each other.
And although they currently have a war economy, libertarian socialism exists in Rojava, and components of it also exist in the west (e.g. Mondragon corporation, Kibbutz.)
Last edited by archineer; 04-02-2016 at 04:37 PM..
I could spend time responding to all of your misrepresentations, but i'll just respond to this for now because i'm rather busy.
Chomsky is an anarcho-syndicalist, which has existed, during the Spanish revolution. It was actually highly successful for the three years it was in operation, so successful in fact that fascists, western governments and the communists all got together to destroy the movement by military force, before they had their war with each other.
And although they currently have a war economy, libertarian socialism exists in Rojava, and components of it also exist in the west (e.g. Mondragon corporation, Kibbutz.)
The "anarcho-syndicalism" during the Spanish revolution was, for the most part, neither anarchic nor syndicalist. It was more of a poorly organized, chaotic Stalinism-lite state capitalism.
Farms were collectivized via violence or the threat of violence. Churches were burned to the ground all over Catalonia, enemies were taken out and shot.
The "anarchists" quickly attempted to create or join governing bodies:
Quote:
While the CNT and especially the FAI repeatedly condemned political participation before the Civil War, it was simple to induce CNT leaders to accept ministerial positions in the central government. Initially, Prime Minister Caballero offered the CNT a single seat, which the CNT national plenum rejected. This was no principled rejection, however; the Anarchist put forward a compromise resolution according to which "'auxiliary commissions' were to be set up in each ministry comprising two representatives of the CNT, two of the UGT, two of the Popular Front parties, and one government delegate. This project would have spared the CNT the embarrassment of direct participation in the cabinet, but would nonetheless have given it representation in every branch of government."[22] This proposal failed; the next Anarchist initiative was to advocate "that the government should be replaced by a national council of defense composed of five members of their organization, five of the UGT, and four members of the Republican parties."[23] Bolloten cites one Anarchist's acerbic critique of this Orwellian attempt to avoid joining the government by calling it something different: "'The purpose of this purely nominal change was to reconcile their fervent desire to enter the government with their antistate doctrine. What childishness! A movement that had cured itself of all prejudices and had always scoffed at mere appearances tried to conceal its abjuration of fundamental principles by changing a name... This behavior is as childish as than of an unfortunate woman, who, having entered a house of ill fame and wishing to preserve a veneer of morality, asks to be called a hetera instead of a *****.'"[24]
And then succeeded:
Quote:
The Anarchists tried this tactic for about a month until CNT national secretary Horacio Prieto, who favored direct participation in the Popular Front government, prevailed. "Horacio Prieto decided to 'put an end to the last elements of opposition,' within the CNT and convoked a plenary session of the regional federations for 18 October. This time his arguments prevailed. The plenum accorded him full powers to conduct negotiations 'in his own way' in order to bring the CNT into the government. 'I was convinced,' he wrote after the war, 'of the necessity of collaboration, and I smothered my own ideological and conscientious scruples.'"[25] The end result of Prieto's dealings with the government was that the CNT won control of the ministries of justice, industry, commerce, and health. Bolloten notes and amply documents his remark that, "Not only did this decision represent a complete negation of the basic tenets of Anarchism, shaking the whole structure of libertarian theory to the core, but, in violation of democratic principle, it had been taken without consulting the rank and file."[26] This violation would not be the last one, as shall be seen.
More:
Quote:
It should be further noted that these Anarchist-run councils and committees were not mild-mannered minimal states, maintaining order while allowing the workers to organize themselves as they pleased. They were "modern" states, concerning themselves with the economy, education, propaganda, transportation, and virtually everything else.
Anarchists are opposed to both the state and to capitalism. Yet they joined forced with communists:
Quote:
Of course, one might wonder how it was possible for Anarchists to have joined forces with the Communists to begin with. How could the avowed opponents of the very existence of the state join forces with the pawns of the most murderous, totalitarian dictatorship that the world had ever known? Even if moral principle did not deter them, at least the Bolsheviks' propensity to exterminate their Anarchist allies might have given them pause. Even though many Anarchists eventually realized that the defeat of Franco would lead to the establishment of a Soviet satellite state, they kept fighting. Clearly the Anarchists' opposition to the Nationalists dwarfed their distaste for Leninist totalitarianism.
And then after the war tried to strike a deal with fascists:
Quote:
Then again, perhaps the CNT yearned so strongly for power that they were willing to sacrifice many principles for limited authority. After May 1937, they endured considerable humiliation in exchange for a paltry role in the Republican government. Were there any limits to what principles the Anarchists would sacrifice in order to be minor political players? Apparently not. Stanley Payne indicates that the CNT leadership actually tried to strike a deal with the fascists in 1945 and 1946. As Payne explains, a Falangist leader "began negotiations that summer with the new clandestine secretary general of the CNT, Jose Leiva, in Madrid. His goal was to rescue the Falange by gaining the support of opposition anarchosyndicalists for a broader, stronger, and more popular national syndicalism. Franco eventually rejected the CNT's demands, and the negotiations foundered the following year. Suppression of the CNT leadership was renewed."[32] What was the nature of the deal that the CNT sought with the Falange? "According to a report presented to Franco in May 1946, the CNT leadership offered a policy of cooperation, proposing to withdraw from the Giral Republican government- in-exile and accept three Falangists on their national committee, but in return insisted on freedom to proselytize."[33]
As for those supposedly stateless, worker-owned collectives:
Quote:
With government recognition came government regulation, as Fraser indicates: "Works councils, elected by an assembly decision of the workers and representing all sectors of the enterprise, were to administer the collectivized factory, 'assuming the functions and responsibilities of the former board of directors.' A Generalitat representative was chosen, in agreement with the workers, to sit on each council. Collectivized enterprises (and private firms under workers' control) in each sector of industry would be represented in an Economic Federation, in turn topped by a general industrial council which would closely control the whole industry. Fifty percent of a collectivized firm's profit would go to an industrial and commercial credit fund which would have to finance all Catalan industry; 20 per cent was to be put to the collective's reserve and depreciation fund; 15 per cent to the collective's social needs, and the remaining 15 per cent to be allocated by the workers as they decided in a general assembly."[38] Bolloten reports that this measure was "sponsored by the CNT and signed by its representative in the government, Juan P. Fabregas, the councilor of the economy."[39] Thus, the principle of genuine worker control was quickly cast aside in favor of something much more similar to state-socialism; a mere 15% of the profits were, under the law, under the discretionary control of the workers.
Who could have seen this coming?
Quote:
[43] Bolloten repeats a remark of CNT militia leader Ricardo Sanz: "'[T]hings are not going as well as they did in the early days of the [revolutionary] movement... The workers no longer think of workings long hours to help the front. They only think of working as little as possible and getting the highest possible wages.'"[44]
If you tax profits at 50%, but the workers own, or are the shareholders, of the factory, then obviously there aren't going to be any profits.
Quote:
In short, practical experience gradually revealed a basic truth of economics for which theoretical reflection would have sufficed: if the workers take over a factory, they will run it to benefit themselves. A worker-run firm is essentially identical to a capitalist firm in which the workers also happen to be the stockholders. Once they came to this realization, however dimly, the Spanish Anarchists had to either embrace capitalism as the corollary of worker control, or else denounce worker control as the corollary of capitalism. For the most part, they chose the latter course.
Huge surprise, when there is no state, you still need someone to perform the necessary functions of a state. So you start forming governing bodies with all the powers of the state needed to accomplish those functions, except that you call them something else. You know, because we've "abolished" the state:
Quote:
As Bolloten writes, "[T]he Anarchosyndicalists, contrary to common belief, were not without their own plans for the nationwide control and rationalization of production. Rootedly opposed to state control or nationalization, they advocated centralization - or socialization, as they called it - under trade-union management of entire branches of production. 'If nationalization were carried out in Spain as the Socialists and Communists desire,' said one Anarchist newspaper, 'we should be on the way to a dictatorship, because by nationalizing everything the government would become the master, the chief, the absolute boss of everyone and everything.'"[45] The Anarchist solution for this danger of absolute dictatorship was to call absolute dictatorship by a different name. "In the opinion of the Anarchosyndicalists," explains Bolloten, "socialization would eliminate the dangers of government control by placing production in the hands of the unions. This was the libertarian conception of socialization, without state intervention, that was to eliminate the wastes of competition and duplication, render possible industrywide planning for both civilian and military needs, and halt the growth of selfish actions among the workers of the more prosperous collectives by using their profits to raise the standard of living in the less favored enterprises."[46] Of course, one could refuse to call a union with such fearsome powers a "state," but it would need all of the enforcement apparatus and authority of a state to execute its objectives. The "more prosperous collectives," for example, would be unlikely to submit voluntarily to industrywide planning funded by their profits.
Another surprise, industry was unable to secure necessary capital. Who could have seen that coming?:
Quote:
"Another obstacle to the integration of industry into a libertarian economy lay in the fact that a large number of firms controlled by the CNT were in a state of insolvency or semi-insolvency and were compelled to seek government intervention to secure financial aid... Both in Catalonia and in the rest of Republican Spain, this situation created grave economic problems for the CNT collectives. So desperately did some of them require funds that Juan Peiro, the Anarchosyndicalist minister of industry, openly recommended intervention by the central government, having received in his department eleven thousand requests for funds in January 1937 alone."[48]
Why didn't they just borrow from the general public? Oh, ****, I forgot, we abolished property rights. Which means you'll never get your money back:
Quote:
The simplest way that the collectives could have avoided dependence on the government would have been to issue debt; in short, to borrow from the general public rather than the government. But undoubtedly the fear of revealing surplus wealth to lend would make such a scheme impossible. Even if their physical safety were not their concern, investors could hardly expect to ever get their money back. The insecurity of property rights thus made it very difficult to borrow from the public, so the collectives mortgaged themselves piece by piece to the government until finally the government rather than the workers owned the means of production.
So much for anarcho-syndicalism in the Spanish revolution.
Quote:
Fraser quotes Albert Perez-Baro, a civil servant and a former CNT member: "'This truly revolutionary measure [the 50 per cent profits tax] - though rarely, if ever, applied - wasn't well received by large numbers of workers, proving, unfortunately, that their understanding of the scope of collectivization was very limited. Only a minority understood that collectivization meant the return to society of what, historically, had been appropriated by the capitalists...'"[55] In other words, most workers assumed that worker control meant that the workers would actually become the true owners of their workplaces, with all the rights and privileges thereof. Only the elite realized that worker control was merely a euphemism for "social control" which in turn can only mean control by the state (or an Anarchist "council," "committee," or "union," satisfying the standard Weberian definition of the state).
Then their unorganized militias got ran over by Franco.
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