Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Quote from: Cameltoemcgee on October 28, 2014, 11:44:39 PM
He's saying that the same people who are doing it now will continue to do it but instead of putting tenders to government for funding, they will be directly funded by people. The argument could be made that in the absence of a violent (and inefficient) monopoly claiming responsibility for remediation of a VERY important issue, the quality of care that underprivileged get will be significantly better without them.
Yes.

I love how you highlighted this in red like you caught me out. Great job detective. How does what cameltoemcgee said contradict anything I said previously?
You just posted a bunch of things I said, but you havent described how I contradicted myself, and I dont see it.
Im saying that the condition of the poor improves under Anarcho-Capitalism better than under state overlords. Im not saying that all the poor will disappear immediately, no matter how many times you try to paste some quotes together to try to make it look like Ive taken some extreme position.

The extreme position that you are trying to put me in is here plain as day for anyone to see and was never a position that I took.
First you say that altruism should mean that all the poor and all the orphans should be taken care of immediately, and since I said altruism already exists in society, I need to show you a society in which all the orphans and all poor people are constantly and completely taken care of. Thats an outrageous definition of altruism, and thats not my position.

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Altruism should mean that all of the 400,000 orphans that society as a whole do not want would be adopted by families annually - now.
Since the dawn of time, has this ever happened before? Has societies, collectively, voluntarily decide to adopt every orphan

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

This of course brings up the question - based on what actually, other than blind supposition? Has corporations made measurable charitable initiatives today that exceeds the government in terms of reach and effectiveness?

I am not concerned with the effectiveness of charities in terms of reach, because government welfare crowds out private charity. You cannot lose money in taxes and then send that same money to private charities. You can give up even more of your income, but people have what is called diminishing marginal utility for their discretionary income. The more money that is taken in taxes, the less people will give in charity, depending on their prefences.
It's also more important for charity to be effective, than have massive quantity. "Charity" that makes the problem worse, is better off if it is smaller.
So the reach part aside, I think there can certainly be made the case that private charities in the United States are far more efficient than Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid.
However, Im not going to do that. Society is so complex we could spend the next century trying to figure out why event X happened despite Y.
Austrian economists do not believe that economics is based on empirical research. Economic understanding comes from the outworking of logical principals.
For instance, we understand that raising the minimum wage, ceteris paribus, will mean that less people will be employed. Raising the minimum wage makes it illegal for the least productive members of society to work.
There is no need to go out and do research, or figure out if this is always the case, because youre always going to find strange outliers where you havent been able to track down all the variables.
This is just the same as if your teacher told you the Pythagorean Theorem, and then you went out a measured a bunch of triangles but you found one where the Pythagorean Theorem didnt seem to hold true. It was a right triangle, but your measurements didnt correspond to what the Pythagorean Theorem gives you. Your teacher would rightly scold you, because whether or not the Pythagorean Theorem is correct is not based on empirical research; where mathematicians measured triangle after triangle and it just happened to be true most of the time. Its based off of the fundamental principles of mathematics.
In this same way, no matter how much empirical research you do, you cant disprove the logical effects of the minimum wage.
Now then, the welfare state is necessarily an entity that takes money from you by force, also known as theft, funnels it through its bureaucracy, and then deposits it back into the accounts of certain members of society. Who those members are is based on the whims of congress or appointed agencies. Because welfare is achieved through taxation, it can remain perpetually indebted, show poor results, and have high overhead. For the population to do anything about it, they need to have a majority vote hampered by the votes of the welfare employees themselves and the recipients.
Now consider private charity. In this scenario, the agency gets money by the consent of their customers, the benefactors. For them to stay in business they have to succeeded in several ways; Most of the money they receive needs to make it to the people theyre trying to help, they have to show positive results, and they must stay solvent. If at any time the benefactors dont like whats going on with this business they can withdraw their funding immediately, no questions asked, and no theft permitted.
There is no fundamental advantage to a welfare state. There is no positive improvement in any way over private charity. If a welfare state succeeds in any way, it is only due to the infusion of insane amounts of money; impoverishing society as a whole in order to benefit the chosen few.
So instead of asking for empirical evidence, I would ask you instead: In what fundamental way is the welfare system structurally superior to a private charity? What do we gain that we cant gain from private charity in a better way?

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

But you can somehow predict their behavior post tax-abolishment?

All I predict is that the same demand for charity that exists with a government will still exist without a government, and that demand will be met more efficiently by private charity.
If society neglects the poor, that is a reflection of their values, and a government could do no better. (But often does far worse.)

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Using your argument, altruistic people like Bill Gates shouldn't exists at all now. Remember your argument of diminishing marginal utility one paragraph above? Further, you seem unaware that Rockefeller and Standard Oil actually paid enormous amount of taxes in the form of import tariffs for their equipment and concession fees - not to mention systematic kickbacks to local, state and federal officials.

Diminishing marginal utility doesnt predict that Bill Gates wouldnt be charitable.
I was using Diminishing Marginal Utility as a way to show that just because some people have more money does not necessarily mean that those people will be more charitable because it depends on their preferences.
The fact that Rockefeller paid taxes has nothing to do with anything Ive said about him. The amount of taxes he paid was the important part.

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Your definition of anarchy is, I'm sorry, just plain silly. Exercising my free will within the constraints of the law is not anarchy.

An Anarcho-Libertarian society is exercising free will under the judiciary of private law agencies, and the executive action of private defense agencies and individuals. In this way having no rulers, which is what I call anarchy.

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Somalia pre-anarchy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=drW5cmd-GQk
Somalia post-anarchy: http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=ac7_1321327107

GDP per capita (PPP constant $) 836b 600c,e ?
Life expectancy (years) 46.0b 48.47c,g Improved
One year olds fully immunized against measles (%) 30 40h Improved
One year olds fully immunized against TB (%) 31 50h Improved
Physicians (per 100,000) 3.4 4h Improved
Infants with low birth weight (%) 16 0.3l Improved
Infant mortality rate (per 1000) 152 114.89c,g Improved
Maternal mortality rate (per 100,000) 1600 1100i Improved
Pop. with access to water (%) 29 29h Same
Pop. with access to sanitation (%) 18 26h Improved
Pop. with access to at least one health facility (%) 28 54.8k Improved
Extreme poverty (% < $1 per day) 60 43.2k Improved
Radios (per 1000) 4.0 98.5k Improved
Telephones (per 1000) 1.92d 14.9k Improved
TVs (per 1000) 1.2 3.7k Improved
Fatality due to measles 8000 5598j,m Improved
Adult literacy rate (%) 24b 19.2j Worse
Combined school enrollment (%) 12.9b 7.5a,f Worse

Only two of the 18 development indicators in Table 1 show a clear welfare decline under stateless: adult literacy and combined gross school enrollment. Given that foreign aid was completely financing education in Somalia pre-1991, it is not surprising that there has been some fall in school enrollment and literacy

A substantial observed rise in consumption without an attendant rise in per capita GDP suggests an unmeasured increase in per capita income between the pre- and post-anarchy periods not reflected in the data.

The lives of people in Somalia improved under anarchy almost across the board compared to under government, your prevaricating and sense of humor notwithstanding.
http://www.peterleeson.com/Better_Off_Stateless.pdf

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Sadly, corporatocracy has always acted in its own self interest, not society's.

Businesss acting in their own self-interest is the same as acting in the interest of society. The only time this is not the case is when the business quickly fails, or when the business is getting favors from government.
I would suggest getting the book The Myth of the Robber Barons and learning the difference been entrepreneurship and political entrepreneurship.
http://www.amazon.com/The-Myth-Robber-Barons-Business/dp/0963020315

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Also, you are laboring under the impression that free market equals complete deregulation - something that the United States nor any other nation have ever tried nor experienced.

Deregulation insofar as practices dont conflict with the Non-Aggression principle, but otherwise yes.
A good example of free trade was inter-state free trade in the United States. One of the biggest reasons the Federal Government was instituted was to regulate interstate commerce which actually meant to remove any kind of barriers to commerce that states might try to erect amongst each-other. This is why when the Constitution we know today went into effect in 1789, all interstate tariffs, trade restrictions, and export taxes were banned. -Dewey, Financial History of the United States (5th ed. 1915) ch 1-3

Quote from: rugrats on October 31, 2014, 04:39:07 AM

Quote from: DumbFruit on October 31, 2014, 12:21:55 AM

Answer to "There is absolute no justification at all to stop aiding people in need." here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=827010.msg9382245#msg9382245
None? How about stopping theft? How about if the agencies responsible arent actually doing their job? What if there is a better way of providing for them? What if the same entity that is suppose to be helping these people is simultaneously starving woman and children to death due to trade sanctions? What if that same entity is outright killing innocent people by the tens of thousands, calling it collateral damage?
I guess thats just altruism existing outside of reality again.

You've asked me this earlier, and I've answered you.

Quote from: rugrats on October 30, 2014, 07:48:04 AM

8. The government is you, me and other people like us. They are not some alien beings or members Alex Jones' ruling 20 families. Fix the government, from outside or inside. Don't let organizations like {url=http://www.alec.org/]ALEC [/url] write bills for your Congressmen. Pressure your Congressmen to repeal acts like Citizens United which allows companies to secretly fund political campaigns. Despise the war? Make it known, like the Flower Generation. They achieved results, despite the almost universal ridicule they received.

Voting can be gamed;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3wIq2xeyal8
Voting didnt stop Hitler. He was elected before the Ermächtigungsgesetz, so Im not sure why you brought that up.
Voting didnt stop this;
http://www.usdebtclock.org/
Voting didnt stop the fall of Rome.
Voting cant stop the tyranny of the majority.

Voting fails time and time again because its subject to social pressures, conflict of interest, Condorcets paradox, and the ignorance of voters.

Elected officials arent me, they dont even necessarily represent the views of the majority.