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That's actually one of those things that I'm always trying to correct. Every human is an individual and has rights of their own. It's why I originally brought up the individualist vs. collectivist distinction. If you lump people into groups when it comes to those rights, it muddies everything up.
I forget if I used my TV example with you or someone else, but when I was in college I lived with 5 other guys and 4 of them randomly went out and bought a new TV we didn't need. Then they told me and my other roommate we owed them $100...I said I wasn't paying because I was fine using the old TV, and I wanted to use that $100 toward rent/utilities. They got upset and said "well we all agreed to get this TV, so you'll have to pay us eventually." (We ended up agreeing that if I don't use it, I don't have to pay.) So that was a case where my responsibility was lumped in with the whole house, even though I had nothing to do with them getting a TV. I just happened to live with them. They wanted to put responsibility on me so that they didn't have to pay as much, and they acted like I was the bad guy for not going along with their plan.
So many analogies!!
At the very least, your roommates should have consulted you before making the decision to buy the new TV-- tyranny of the majority and all of that. Don't think that socialism isn't compatible with democracy-- the public would need to be a LOT more informed than they are today in order to make it really work for them. I am also willing to accept that a college roommate situation isn't necessarily a democracy, especially if you're not the best of friends...
But then again, there is nothing morally questionable about refusing to buy a new TV. If your roommate needed money for a life-saving heart operation, everyone was pitching in, and you refused because you wanted to buy yourself an Xbox One, then we're getting a bit closer to why I'm not a Libertarian.
I would also have a really hard time accepting that the Libertarian utopia would completely eliminate the need for group decision making and/or democracy. Everyone is just going to retreat into their own little bubbles and refuse to deal with other people?
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Originally Posted by T0103E
I don't see how you come to that conclusion. A couple question off the top of my head..how do they afford and maintain an army, why would they be intimidating anyone, and why would they care if other people have their own collectivist society or community? The whole philosophy is about letting people organize however they want, without forcing anyone into any system. I also never said force would be gone completely. Common crime would still happen, but nobody would think it was ever the right and moral thing to do. Outside of sociopaths, people already try to live by the non-aggression principle and don't take from others in their own lives. They're just convinced that voting for a politician to do it on their behalf is completely legitimate when it isn't.
I think it's pretty naive to rely exclusively on a principle to prevent aggression between corporations. Libertarian society is one in which almost nothing is regulated, so it wouldn't take long to burn through every resource, completely destroy the environment, and leave the money machine looking desperately for new places to turn. There is only so much newly freed up public land that they could rape and pillage until they turned their sites on other people's stuff and all of those principles flew right out the window.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
People do a lot of charitable things, but nobody does everything out of the goodness of their hearts. I completely agree that having something you care about give you motivation, but there's also a lot of hard work required in society that nobody really wants to do. I'm not so sure that the people doing undesirable jobs will work hard at it when they see others doing something they'd rather do. Not everyone can have the job they want, regardless of what system they're part of. My question is, if everything is provided to people no matter what they decide to do to help society, why would people do the harder work?
Well, I suppose that means there would be more incentive to find alternative solutions for the jobs that nobody wants to do. In the short term, these jobs would need to be heavily incentivized. Shorter hours, better benefits, early retirements, perks, bonuses, etc. There is more to life than just the basics, after all.
Providing everyone with what they need to prosper isn't the same thing as ridding the world of all luxuries, leisure and/or indulgence.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
I definitely have PLENTY of issues with the way schools are now, but I'm not sure I agree on grades. Grades might not be rewards, exactly, but they are earned. If you know the information and answer the questions correctly, you earn the high grade. If you can't answer the questions and get them wrong, you get a lower grade. It's not really about labeling...kids can form an identity or ego from how well they do, but it's like that with anything.
I'm not talking about students-- Teachers tend to be biased by their own marking criteria and tend to use grades to 'file' students into categories that come to define them for the rest of their lives. The students then accept these labels and behave accordingly.
It's called self-efficacy.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
I'm not sure you understood my point actually...I don't think anyone feels proud of themselves being on welfare or doing nothing, no. I was saying that hypothetically, if no person on earth decided to start their own business, there would be no jobs for anybody. The fact that a person is running a business is already doing other people a favor, and their doing another favor by hiring employees. It's really a mutually beneficial arrangement, because the owner needs help if he wants to the business to grow, and people who don't feel like starting their own business can take some of the owner's money in return for helping. The problem is that people act as if the employees are OWED more. If a poor person in China with basic skills takes a small wage at a factory, they take that because the alternative is working on a farm and making even less. If a person is willing to work for $2/hr and another thinks they're entitled to $10/hr, hiring the $2/hr person isn't exploiting them. They aren't even owed a job at all, and there are others competing for that job.
Another reason why I'm not a Libertarian-- it turns you into a sociopath.
You're defending wage slavery now?
Why are you talking about people starting businesses? Do you think that a socialist state wouldn't run any businesses? If you're an employee, barring the fact you're a Libertarian die-hard, do you really care if your efforts are serving some rich guy versus the government, so long as you're happy and healthy and life is good?
If the government took over all businesses tomorrow and said everyone is now a government employee with the same benefits packages that most government employees get, I would be pretty happy... and a lot of minimum wage workers would be absolutely ECSTATIC.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
One wrench in the gears here is that politics often affects the poor areas of the world, and I feel for those people. I don't defend any business that uses the government for their own gains at the expense of everyone else. That is true exploitation, and I'd support money being taken from those people...fraudulent money isn't rightfully theirs.
A Libertarian that supports state-sanctioned wealth redistribution???!!!
Amazing!
But I thought that Libertarians agreed that almost every single large corporation running today was a product of government favoritism? So would there be state-sanctioned wealth redistribution before the Libertarian utopia truly came into effect?
Most Libertarians I've met tell me they're going to get rid of the government and then all of the corporations they've created will just magically disappear, being unable to compete without their unfair advantage.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
I don't think they want to do that. Individuality is different than individual rights - self-ownership...the right to not be aggressed against or stolen from. I'd honestly love to see you and other like-minded people create a community like you're describing within the free society that I'd advocate, as long as everyone is participating voluntarily. One of the benefits of letting people organize as they wish is experimenting and adopting what works and discarding what doesn't. The state really creates a lot of stagnation.
The end goal of all socialists and communists is the dissolution of the state. Communism is a 'classless, stateless society'. Some people believe that the path to that classless, stateless society is through revolution, some people think it can naturally arise through an increasingly progressive government, and I'm sure that some people think, like you, that they can get there by removing the government altogether... but I'm not big on revolution and the last option seems hopelessly naive to me.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
Sounds interesting, but I don't really like the idea of the state deciding what's important and what isn't.
All of those innovative people would also work for the state.
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Originally Posted by T0103E
There's the whole thing about the market naturally optimizing capital...someone who's great at cooking and someone that's mediocre open restaurants, the great cook gets the customers and the mediocre one goes out of business, and that allows the mediocre cook's capital to be spent more effectively on something they're better at.
So if people didn't like the food, the business would stay open-- but the cook would be replaced. You would still have a say in what kind of food would be served in your own local restaurants. Competition could still occur (it's an effective motivator)-- just not between businesses.
Then you truly don't have a blue print to a solution for your ideals.
You made a random statement that didn't contradict anything I've said, so what was there to defend? I'm aware that there are 7 billion people on Earth.
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As someone mentioned and I'll expand on... .You seem to be pushing for some neo-feudalism mixed with neo-luddism.
I have no idea what you think I'm pushing for. Feudalism is based on artificial class structure and status and included favors from the state. Voluntaryism/Anarcho-Capitalism is contract based. Luddism...are you saying technology would regress somehow? If anything, innovation would increase.
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Are you familiar with John Locke and the Enlightenment? Are you familiar with the Social Contract which was based on previous men such as Hobbes and Kant (among others)?
At the very least, your roommates should have consulted you before making the decision to buy the new TV-- tyranny of the majority and all of that. Don't think that socialism isn't compatible with democracy-- the public would need to be a LOT more informed than they are today in order to make it really work for them. I am also willing to accept that a college roommate situation isn't necessarily a democracy, especially if you're not the best of friends...
But then again, there is nothing morally questionable about refusing to buy a new TV. If your roommate needed money for a life-saving heart operation, everyone was pitching in, and you refused because you wanted to buy yourself an Xbox One, then we're getting a bit closer to why I'm not a Libertarian.
I would also have a really hard time accepting that the Libertarian utopia would completely eliminate the need for group decision making and/or democracy. Everyone is just going to retreat into their own little bubbles and refuse to deal with other people?
I think it's pretty naive to rely exclusively on a principle to prevent aggression between corporations. Libertarian society is one in which almost nothing is regulated, so it wouldn't take long to burn through every resource, completely destroy the environment, and leave the money machine looking desperately for new places to turn. There is only so much newly freed up public land that they could rape and pillage until they turned their sites on other people's stuff and all of those principles flew right out the window.
Well, I suppose that means there would be more incentive to find alternative solutions for the jobs that nobody wants to do. In the short term, these jobs would need to be heavily incentivized. Shorter hours, better benefits, early retirements, perks, bonuses, etc. There is more to life than just the basics, after all.
Providing everyone with what they need to prosper isn't the same thing as ridding the world of all luxuries, leisure and/or indulgence.
I'm not talking about students-- Teachers tend to be biased by their own marking criteria and tend to use grades to 'file' students into categories that come to define them for the rest of their lives. The students then accept these labels and behave accordingly.
It's called self-efficacy.
Another reason why I'm not a Libertarian-- it turns you into a sociopath.
You're defending wage slavery now?
Why are you talking about people starting businesses? Do you think that a socialist state wouldn't run any businesses? If you're an employee, barring the fact you're a Libertarian die-hard, do you really care if your efforts are serving some rich guy versus the government, so long as you're happy and healthy and life is good?
If the government took over all businesses tomorrow and said everyone is now a government employee with the same benefits packages that most government employees get, I would be pretty happy... and a lot of minimum wage workers would be absolutely ECSTATIC.
A Libertarian that supports state-sanctioned wealth redistribution???!!!
Amazing!
But I thought that Libertarians agreed that almost every single large corporation running today was a product of government favoritism? So would there be state-sanctioned wealth redistribution before the Libertarian utopia truly came into effect?
Most Libertarians I've met tell me they're going to get rid of the government and then all of the corporations they've created will just magically disappear, being unable to compete without their unfair advantage.
The end goal of all socialists and communists is the dissolution of the state. Communism is a 'classless, stateless society'. Some people believe that the path to that classless, stateless society is through revolution, some people think it can naturally arise through an increasingly progressive government, and I'm sure that some people think, like you, that they can get there by removing the government altogether... but I'm not big on revolution and the last option seems hopelessly naive to me.
All of those innovative people would also work for the state.
So if people didn't like the food, the business would stay open-- but the cook would be replaced. You would still have a say in what kind of food would be served in your own local restaurants. Competition could still occur (it's an effective motivator)-- just not between businesses.
I'm on my lunch right now but I'll definitely get to this later.
Among Obama's primary campaign pledges to the American people was to bring about the ACA.
Obama defeated Romney, winning both the popular vote and the electoral college, with 332 electoral votes to Romney's 206. He became the eleventh President and third Democrat to win a majority of the popular vote more than once.
Immigration:
ABC News/Washington Post Poll. March 3-6, 2016. N=1,000 adults nationwide. Margin of error ± 3.5.
"There are about 11 million undocumented immigrants living in the United States. Would you support or oppose an effort by the federal government to deport all these undocumented immigrants and send them back to their home countries?" -- Most oppose.
97% of the scientists surveyed agreed that global temperatures had increased during the past 100 years; 84% said they personally believed human-induced warming was occurring, and 74% agreed that "currently available scientific evidence" substantiated its occurrence.
You made a random statement that didn't contradict anything I've said, so what was there to defend? I'm aware that there are 7 billion people on Earth.
So how are you going to start this idea? Most of the land in the world is owned by a government, especially all the good land.
Someone in America can't simply volunteer their land to start your ideal community as that land is still subject to the laws of the US govt. Where will be the geographic location that your gingerbread houses will be built on?
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I have no idea what you think I'm pushing for. Feudalism is based on artificial class structure and status and included favors from the state. Voluntaryism/Anarcho-Capitalism is contract based.
Class structure arises organically as it wasn't some random single day that some dude decided to call himself king and start this feudal system.
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Luddism...are you saying technology would regress somehow? If anything, innovation would increase.
That's absurd. Innovation requires capital. The Bay Area (SF and San Jose) in the most innovative metro in the world and it requires tens of billions in venture capital to support not to mention the capital involved to run some of the world's best universities.
Technology at this stage in human development is very capital intensive and your notions would halt innovation. Is someone going to volunteer a power plant or solar panel manufacturing plant, how will electricity (a big requirement for modern innovation) going to work?
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Of course, and it's BS.
Why? You still aren't forced to live your life under the government and those who prefer what our government brings stay.
Why do liberals trust the notion of government more than big business?
given that business or commerce predates organized governance by thousands of years, and even apes are capable of basic barter, I'd wager any intelligent person would be inclined to uphold the supremacy of government over commerce i.e. ''trust the notion of government more than big business'', regardless of their political background.
You do realize successfully managing a first-world country constitutes a far greater achievement than successfully running a business, RIGHT?
Or are you so sycophantic as to not realize this ?
In reality, I think your title is just poorly phrased.
Successfully managing. Key word successfully. Yes lets have government, which causes all our booms and busts to run things. Like the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money handed out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for? Or maybe government should allow little to no down payment loans to people who don't qualify for a mortgage?
Successfully managing. Key word successfully. Yes lets have government, which causes all our booms and busts to run things. Like the $8.5 trillion in taxpayer money handed out by Congress to the Pentagon since 1996 that has never been accounted for?
Such a large number. Could it possibly be that that money is in the hands of Government Military contractors, i.e. corporations ?
Corporations are run for the benefit of their shareholders, executives and BOD. Maximizing their payday is what they are supposed to do.
Yes, liberals have always been a minority in the USA.
Do you mean "minority" as in not a majority? Who is not a minority according to whatever point you are trying to make here?
Based on 2014 data, 39% identify as independents, 32% as Democrats and 23% as Republicans. This is the highest percentage of independents in more than 75 years of public opinion polling.
Not sure a good number of independents wouldn't consider themselves liberals, but that's another matter...
There is evidence that liberals are less a "minority" than conservatives, but hard to say, since I'm not sure I understand the thinking or math here. The numbers don't lie in any case...
Here too it depends on what data you are referring to, but I don't think it is right to consider those disappointed in the roll out and results so far as "hating" Obamacare. Even Obama has expressed disappointment, and we all know the initial roll out with website glitches and all that didn't "win hearts and minds," but depending on what question(s) you ask, you get a different take on what Americans think about the ACA in general.
For example, ask whether preferred to keep the ACA and make the necessary adjustments for improvement going forward, or ask whether to go back to how it was before the ACA, and I'm not at all sure most Americans would choose to go back to the way it was (especially not those who couldn't get health care coverage even if their life depended on it, as was the case for many).
Should we spend the time digging up all the various different surveys about this? I don't really think so, because I have seen enough to last me a good long while and nothing really seems entirely conclusive, but I do try to remember that the Social Security Act was also "less than perfect" when it "went live." How many adjustments/amendments have been made since then?
Rarely do massive national programs like this (involving trillions of dollars, almost 20% of our entire GDP) evolve without a fair amount of "growing pains" over more time than most of us have patience for.
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