Post
Topic
Board Politics & Society
Re: Are Bitcoiners Neoliberals?
by
DumbFruit
on 01/11/2014, 19:35:30 UTC
How can you achieve either when you censor or misrepresent my posts?
You need to show how the quotes that I choose are somehow being displayed out of context, which alters the meaning of the quote. You don’t do this, you just go into arguments from emotion and ad-hominem whenever absolutely everything wasn’t quoted from start to finish.
Which is just silly, most of the world does not do this. Scientific journals will simply put an annotation to the relevant material and not even quote a single line. Are scientific journals all trying to play games with the source material? Certainly not, you’re just being a baby, because there’s a certain way you like to respond to posts that don’t match everyone elses.
On one hand, you have a crystal ball on how society in a tax free environment will react to those in need, but on the other hand, you don’t have a crystal ball (never mind that we’re talking about the past and present) to explain why charitable donations did not rise when the economy is flooded with $6.6 trillion. The air is thick with hypocrisy.
No, not really. All you’ve proven is I’m not omniscient and Austrian Economics cannot predict with utmost certainty outcomes in a marketplace because marketplaces are inherently chaotic and unpredictable.
There are certainly activities that you can do that are ultimately harmful to society, but tracking down all the variables and seeing where the harm took place is an extremely difficult thing to do. This doesn’t undermine Austrian Economics or Anarcho-Capitalism one bit.
Of course you won’t admit it - even after presented with your own words… and are absolutely reveling in my use of the word ‘altruism’ and ‘altruistic’, completely oblivious to the fact that I am using the catchword of self-professed paleolibertarians.
This is how you defined altruism, not me;
Err, have you forgotten Oxford’s definition I posted three days ago?

The Oxford Dictionary said that if there are any altruistic people in society then altruism means “that all of the 400,000 orphans that society as a whole do not want would be adopted by families annually - now”?

I must of missed that.
Just for the record, when you say corporations help everyone, does that include them opening sweat ship factories overseas to avoid paying real, livable wages to workers here?
You would prefer they opened factories here to avoid overseas workers having the opportunity to work themselves out of third world status?
Just When you say they help everyone, regardless of race, class, gender or age, does that include business owners that
(i)   Do not hire people based on their race, class, gender or age?
“Hiring” itself is not a benefit to mankind, first of all.
The goal of businesses is to provide goods and services, and they will provide goods and services to any race, class, gender or age, pretty much all the time. I know there are outliers, but competition will drive out businesses that are incorrectly discriminating against their employees or their customers.
Note that there are perfectly acceptable reasons to discriminate. If you have severe Parkinsons, you shouldn't be doing triple bypass surgery, for instance.

(ii) Pay lower wages to people based on their race, class, gender or age?
Competition will drive this out. Consider if we lived in a society that didn’t want to hire any woman. This would be a huge business opportunity for you, because there are all these highly intelligent and hard-working woman that are not being hired over men that are less intelligent and less hard working. You could outcompete by hiring the best woman and the best men.
You might say that the culture wouldn’t allow that, but that’s a cultural problem, not a free-market one.
(iii) Exploit entire communities for their natural resources such as timber, oil or and diamond?
I love how “exploit” has turned into some kind of a bad word, and that’s somehow enough to replace an argument. Businesses get diamonds and wood from certain places in the world, ok. Did you have a point you wanted to make with that?
You can call them whatever you want. It only reflects on you and your mentality.
And the ad-hominems just keep flowing, should I keep a tally and we can see which one of us has used less? You seem very concerned about reputation after all.
Do you realize how ridiculous it sounds when you make statements like “Voluntary contributions are better than State welfare”, when you yourself have conceded that you can’t empirically prove it?
I said that neither one of us can empirically prove it to either of our benefit. This isn’t “ridiculous” this as an old and well established fact of Economics.
http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/071103.asp
Quote
“For example; I can say, “Look at the United States in the 1800’s, it had tremendous growth and innovation under little taxation and essentially no public welfare system.”
Aren’t you forgetting something? The slave labor advantage that early America had? You know, the subhumans without wages who we used to exploit the enormous natural resources of the land and as farm workers and later on, railroad and factory workers? Yeah, we had no public welfare system. Why would we? They’re not humans, right?

You bandy around terms like praxeology and ceteris paribus as if these somehow lend any weight to your arguments. Like “diminishing marginal utility” you used earlier, I don’t even think you understand what “ceteris paribus” means, judging by how you are using it.
Ok, you didn’t address what I was talking about, which is the well-established fact that economics is not testable. My point was about why the term “ceteris paribus” is used. Why do you suppose that "ceteris paribus" is not used in mathematics?
When I was using “diminishing marginal utility” I was pointing out a reason why it’s so hard to predict what will happen under certain scenarios. People have different chains of wants that they satisfy depending on the amount of any particular good they have, including discretionary money.
So can you or can you not demonstrate this empirically?
No one can demonstrate it empirically in either direction with any certainty.
What are talking about? Federal welfare exists now. It helps the citizens. Some may argue it is not enough or not efficient, but it is there. That’s empirical evidence.

There is empirical evidence of private charities as well, though maybe there’s not enough of it (Private charity). That doesn’t help us understand which is a fundamentally more moral and efficient system.
Voluntary charitable contributions as a form of a credible social safety net does not exist – it has never existed. You are arguing that in a tax free society, it will exist. The onus is on you to prove that. Fourth day on, you still can’t prove it (not that you can, of course).
The onus is not on me to prove that a “charitable contributions as a form of a credible social safety net” will absolutely exist under any particular circumstance.

Is this not in principal true;
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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 employee’s themselves and the recipients.
If it is true, is this not superior;
No, it’s not true. Because
(i), blaming the government’s level of indebtedness to welfare spending (0.066%) is silly,
I didn’t do that, try again.
(ii) ‘poor results’ can be improved upon
That’s not the point, the point is that it can show poor results with very little recourse by those who pay into it.
(iii) The population includes the welfare recipients. Being poor does not mean you should not be involved in decision making process.
I didn’t say that just because you’re poor you should not be involved in decision making processes. I was pointing out a distinct conflict of interest.
Quote
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 they’re trying to help, they have to show positive results, and they must stay solvent. If at any time the benefactor’s don’t like what’s going on with this business they can withdraw their funding immediately, no questions asked, and no theft permitted.
And if no benefactors exist in your tax free market utopia?
It is not a utopia. If there would be no benefactors in the free market then there would be no votes in a democracy. Or I suppose there would be votes from those that want the benefit, but if all the votes were coming in this manner, then that would mean 51% are literally voting for something from the other 49%, which is unethical and unsustainable.
If there are votes coming from the people that are giving, then we already know there would be benefactors in an anarcho-capitalist society consisting of the same people.
Yup, you can’t guarantee anything. You can’t guarantee that people will voluntarily contribute time, money and resources to take care of the sick, aged, handicapped. You can’t guarantee that in your tax free utopia, people will take care of orphans. Thank you so much for admitting that. It took four days, but you finally caved. If you recall, this was your initial point of contention with me four days ago. Now that you have conceded that point, are you going to find something else to argue with me?
Haha. I’m not omniscient, you caught me. That has absolutely nothing to do with why private charity is better than public welfare.
For example; Can you prove to me absolutely that welfare voting won’t be used to ultimately hurt society? You can’t prove it? Then welfare is bad, QED.
Private charity is better because it’s structurally superior and because it’s morally superior, not because I'm omniscient.
If I use your flawed argument about diminishing marginal utility, it actually does predict that “Bill Gates wouldn’t be charitable”. Remember what you said?

Quote
“when applied in this instance means that people certainly might not immediately put their money into charity as soon as discretionary spending comes up”
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“when applied in this instance means that people certainly might not immediately put their money into charity as soon as discretionary spending comes up”
To be honest, I don’t think you really understand what diminishing marginal utility even means.
Do you know what “might” means? As in the difference between “might not” and “always will not”?
Oh give it, up. You have no clue what you’re talking about.
You said that “diminishing marginal utility” somehow means Bill Gates wouldn’t exist. Please make that argument or concede. How you can come to that conclusion, make no argument for it, and then accuse me of not knowing what “diminishing marginal utility” means, is beyond me.

Really? You left in a question mark, but did not bother explaining what that question mark is for? Go on, explain it to me.
It means that the reported GDP went down, but the author went on to explain why he suspects that the records weren’t correct. So the author was saying that it is unclear whether or not this record accurately shows an increase or decrease in the welfare of the population.

Anarchy only ended three years ago. Your data, using 15-20 year gap, showed fractional improvements in several areas (while ignoring the effect that foreign aid has on those numbers, and the presence of regional warlords). The data I presented showed vast improvements in just two years, which completely negates any arguments about how anarchy is better for Somalia.
It doesn’t, you said that removing the welfare state would decrease the welfare of the people in the given region. I showed that there was actually an improvement in Somalia during anarchy, which shows that your contention is not always the case.
So no, your argument didn’t negate any arguments about how anarchy is better for Somalia than the preceding state of affairs, which was my argument.

Here, let me requote myself.
Quote
“You are resorting to Godwin's law once again. Yes, Hitler was elected. But you are intentionally ignoring the years of unchecked abuse he inflicted on the government culminating with him holding the entire Reichstag hostage while forcing the passing of Ermächtigungsgesetz, which elevated his powers to near monarchy.”
Again, Ermächtigungsgesetz happened after he was elected, so what’s your point?
Exactly what I wrote. He was no longer operating under a democratic government. Do you disagree?
He arose through a democracy, what he did from there was only possible because he was elected.
Let’s go with your idea. Go and game the election presidential election in 2016, and the 2018 midterms since you make it sound so easy. Once your candidates win the Presidency and two thirds of the seats in the House and Senate, then go on to appoint supportive Justices into the Supreme Court. Then, dissolve the union, disband the government and you can have your tax free utopia.
I never said that it was easy, nor that it is gamed in favor of smaller government. In fact, it is gamed in favor of larger government largely because it is not easy.
Now excuse me while I go an address your position on sex with minors.
That was rich, since I didn’t actually tell you my position on sex with minors.