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At 6/2/10 01:26 PM, gumOnShoe wrote: The argument against the boat by people who know what they are talking about is not that they brought weapons, but that they brought supplies that could be converted into weapons

Ok, wonderful. Now tell me what's wrong with this? Anything can be used as a weapon. God forbid the Palestinians get their hands on some kitchen knives! Half of Israel could be destroyed by the time we stop them!

I'm sure some of them did panic, but it doesn't change the fact that they decided to leave peaceful protesting behind, and that they brought what could be converted into weapons and then began converting of their own volition.

Which is a naturally response in the context of self preservation. I'm not saying they were right in attacking the Israeli's, I'm saying that there's little to no evidence to support that this was planned ahead of time as you seem to be positing. There were no formal weapons on board the ship as far as I've heard, and the violent reaction to the boarding can be explained by a panic.

At 6/2/10 12:27 PM, gumOnShoe wrote:

At 6/2/10 12:02 PM, Musician wrote: All improvised weapons. Including the slingshots that were part of a toy shipment to Gaza.

So, peaceful protesters were bringing in materials that could be used to make improvised weaponry?

Lets see... kitchen knives, ceremonial daggers, flares and flare guns (the "bombs" in question i believe, unheard of on a ship), metal poles from sun parasols, slingshots, marbles, a bunch of tools from the engine room. By this standard, every passenger cruise ship is a fully armed neo-nazi terrorist war machine.

At 6/2/10 10:56 AM, morefngdbs wrote: Look at some of the other things found being carried by these " peaceful people" .
The other video's showing weapons found... since when did peaceful people need wrist rocket slingshots ?
Explosives ?
knives ?
Clubs & other blunt weapons ?

Peaceful , caring people....going there to help !
What a crock of Bullshit.

All improvised weapons. Including the slingshots that were part of a toy shipment to Gaza. And the explosives (Stun Grenades) from what I understand were originally thrown by the Israelis. So it's ok for Israel to throw explosives at the passengers, but suddenly it's a crime when they have their own weapons hurled back at them? If the israelis were so worried about flash bombs, they shouldn't have bombarded the ship with them before landing.

In other news. Turkey is majorly pissed over this incident and it looks like they're going to be sending more flotillas, this time with a Navy escort. If this happens, Israel will in all likelihood have to back down. Egypt also opened its border with Gaza in response, though how long that will last isn't clear.

All in all, this is a PR disaster for Israel. And that's probably a good thing if it results in the blockade being lifted. It's just a shame that it takes a bunch of dead turks for the world to start taking action against Israel's bullshit.

At 6/1/10 08:26 PM, SolInvictus wrote: something makes me think many will have issues with who should be considered "impartial".

No doubt, but we don't allow criminals to head the investigations of their own crimes, why in gods name would we allow Israel to head the investigation of this incident.? I propose an open investigation from multiple 3rd party sources, completely independent of each other. That's the closest I think we can come to impartial.

That being said LEGALLY, it should be turkey's call, since the incident occurred in international waters on a ship bearing Turkey's flag. But it still remains to be seen whether or not the Israeli's will return the flotillas.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/world/middle_
east/10208027.stm

Some points of interest:

Speaking as he arrived back in Berlin wrapped in a blue blanket, Mr Paech, a member of a German opposition party, said Israel's operation "was not an act of self-defence".

"Personally I saw two-and-a-half wooden batons that were used... There was really nothing else. We never saw any knives.

________________________________________
___

Activist Bayram Kalyon, arriving back in Istanbul, had also been a passenger on the Mavi Marmara.

"The captain... told us 'They are firing randomly, they are breaking the windows and entering inside. So you should get out of here as soon as possible'. That was our last conversation with him."

________________________________________
___

Meanwhile, in Nazareth, Israeli Arab MP Haneen Zuabi - who was on the flotilla - told a press conference thatIsraeli forces began firing while still in the helicopters hovering over the ships.

________________________________________
___

This is ridiculous. There needs to be an investigation into this, now. An impartial one, AKA one not conducted by Israel.

I'm going to wait until full footage of the video is released before I come to any final conclusions

At 5/31/10 04:46 PM, adrshepard wrote: Been shot? Are you kidding me? Do you see any bullet wounds on them? I don't.

I don't either, but frankly that's the only thing that could have caused the injury. Since they weren't on the ship whatever caused the injury (which is described as being in the head) had to be long range. So they were either attacking the ships with bullets or magic.

It's pathetic how easily you've been taken in by this.

Are you kidding me? You're the one trying to revise history here. Dozens of civilians were shot on the flotilla. So obviously at some point during this conflict the IDF started discharging live rounds. Now, Al Jazeera's reporters claim that the IDF shot first. I'm inclined to believe them until new evidence arises.

At 5/31/10 03:42 PM, Shayel wrote: No it's not. Where did you "clearly" see anything fired at the ships before the boarding?

Right at the beginning of the video you can see injured civilians, who have been shot. This was chronologically before the boarding of the ship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pn-l_JltC B4

The video clearly shows that Israel fired on the ships (with live rounds) before boarding them. In light of this, any action taken on the boarding commandos can be viewed as legitimate self defense. Furthermore, no weapons were found inside of the flotillas' cargo holds, so allegations that they were delivering weapons and munitions to terrorist factions in Gaza are false.

At 5/18/10 09:46 AM, Gorgonof wrote: While a lot of money is spent on the poor, look at how your states taxes where spent, wealthier areas probably spend more.

Because infrastructure like roads and schools tend to be paid for mostly through local taxes. But even in rich communities, you can't deny that the poorer members of the community are benefiting more from government services than the wealthy are.

At 5/17/10 09:48 PM, adrshepard wrote: 100% wrong. It's not wealth-redistribution. It's public investment that enables people to prosper economically.

Alright, so minus the spin what's the difference? I mean look at what actually happens here. Taxes are collected from society through progressive tax brackets, then redistributed equally in the form of services. Sounds like wealth redistribution to me.

At 5/17/10 04:08 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: 1. Why do we need to change the whole system for this? There is nothing preventing workers pooling their own resources and starting their own firm. Why shouldn't hierarchical and non-hierarchical be allowed to coexist?

It depends on what school of Marxism you're directing this question towards. I personally don't believe that the entire system needs to be rebuilt from the ground up in order to achieve a more equitable (smaller) wealth disparity within this country. Other schools would disagree, arguing that the existance of private ownership in and of itself inherently leads to exploitation, and thus that private property should be completely abolished.

The way I see it, we don't need to abolish private property to minimize the exploitation of labour. We just need intervention in key areas of the market. Equal oppurtunity for education needs to be provided to everyone regardless of their social class. Macroeconomic policy needs to be focused on providing the ability to invest in capital, to everyone regardless of social class. Low interest loans from the government to any group of individuals looking to start a cooperative woul
d be a good first step.

2. If you believe that profit should we shared equally among workers, d you also believe losses should be shared equally?

Yes. If the factory makes $300,000 a year, and that's divided among 15 workers according to labour contributed (which is decided democratically), then each worker is going to recieve somewhere around $20,000 each. If the factory only makes $150,000 next year, each worker only recieves roughly $10,000 each. Every member of the collective has a vested interest in increasing their overall productivity, because every member shares the risks and rewards of their company.

At 5/16/10 11:28 PM, adrshepard wrote: You mean like "spreading the wealth around?"
Or taxes on one group to pay for another group's mortgage payments or health insurance?

It's when society as a collective owns the means of production, at least in theory. Imagine a factory full of workers, producing widgets. The total output of the factory is $300,000 a year among 15 workers. Marxism basically states, that since the workers are the ones who actually produced the wealth, they're the ones who have a legitimate claim to the wealth. Thus the wealth should be distributed by labour contributed. So the wealth is distributed fairly equally among the workers, $20,000 each.

In a capitalist society it's different. Private ownership of the means of production insures that the owner of the factory gets final say in the way the wealth is distributed. So despite the fact that the owner produce relatively less than the workers did, he still (given the right conditions) claims the lions share of the profit.

At 5/16/10 11:18 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Nope, marxism will never work, because among other things (you know, like inherent human nature etc), you will never be able to overcome the problem of economic calculation in the absence of a price system.

I think you're confusing Marxism with Soviet Communism. There are many schools of Marxism, not all of them are against market pricing.

(Net Revenue)

I meant to say Net Profit. Whatever

At 5/9/10 01:34 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: *A lot

Not as much as you seem to be positing. Admittedly I don't have any econometric models on hand, but these 100% markup figures you're pushing are rubbish; patently false. Based on what I've seen from book-keeping at local community colleges / state agencies (Note: I don't claim this to be the final word on anything, but in the absence of real economic models this is what I'll base my arguments on), I'd say that there's maybe waste, but it's not huge waste. And like most private business the majority of the money is going into salary payments, which in an economy as unbalanced (in terms of where the wealth is) as this, isn't necessarily a bad kind of "waste".

Let me try and illustrate this.

Under a state regime this is how roads are paid for. In the case of highways, you're not going to see lower income people needing to actually invest huge sums of money in order to get the road built.

I was actually referring to a road that was already built, as if the road was directly handed over to private competition. If you're wondering about the high costs, I just found it easier to illustrate that way.

For one, they are not charged on a basis of gas consumption. (i.e. the gas tax) You seem to ignore that this is a flat tax on the poor and especially those that cannot immediately afford a fuel efficient vehicle and so chose to buy older vehicles, and are thus socked with high gas taxes.

Wonderful, but I don't believe that public highways and a gas tax are mutually inclusive. You may very well be making a good argument for the abolishment of the gas tax, but not so much for abolishment of public roads.

Pricing roads on a basis of what is simply supply and demand, 1) Encourages car pooling 2) increases the demand for alternative and (non-money-pit) forms of public transportation.

Which, ironically, is what a gas tax does as well. The fact of the matter is that a flat fee discriminates against those with lower money. What if public transportation isn't a viable option for a poor man? What if he works a specific trade and needs a truck to carry his tools? It just becomes another barrier into certain fields. We talked about these in the last thread remember?

there's no reason for someone to figure out how to make a computer for 500,000 dollars and be able to sell it to a new market, or 100,000, or 10,000, and so on so on until you develop computers that can be sold to the masses. So your money pit becomes permanent.

Correct me if I'm wrong but I don't believe subsides are done on a unit per unit basis, I think they're done by cost. So lets take your scenario. Lets say computer production for a whole year costs 80m and they make 90m revenue per year and the government decides to subsidize half of the production costs (which is a huge subsidy that generally wont happen, but lets just say) 40m (Net revenue 5m). So a company come up with a big innovation and now computers are much much cheaper. However, they know that if they go below a certain cost, they'll lose their subsidy. So instead of lowering their expenses, they expand their operation. So now they're still spending approx 80m a year (half of which is subsidized), but they're making 11m a year in revenue (Net revenue 7m).

So here's a break down of what I'm trying to illustrate: ((Cost of Unit) - (Price of Unit)) * (Amount Sold) = (Net Revenue). So there are 3 ways to increase net revenue. The first is to sell the same amount at a lower cost, the second is to sell more at the same cost, the third is to do both. Subsidies only really discourage the first one. So in summary I do think there are side effects of subsidies, but I think the side effects are more about companies being given incentives to expand than they are about discouraging innovation. Which admittedly can be a good or a bad thing, depending on what you're trying to encourage in an economy.

Of course the hilarious part of all this is that half way through typing all that I realized that none of this is particularly relevant to the discussion we're having. We're not talking about subsidies in the traditional sense. When I say the rich subsidize the costs of the poor I'm referring to the progressive rates that US citizens are charged for their roads. Traditional supply/demand economics aren't really relevant to government programs.

You're assuming that the government can do as good a job with the same money, it never has and it never will. I already pointed out private schools and charter schools offer higher quality education for (often times) under 1/2 the cost.

Well, you already know my stance on that. Private schools has certain discretions that public schools don't. They get to cherry pick the students who are going to be the cheapest and easiest to teach. So of course their costs are going to be lower, public schools would have lower costs if they had that discretion (Not that I think they should, I believe everyone deserves an education). But yeah, you already know what I think, I disagree with the 100% markup model you're pushing, I've seen no credible evidence to support that claim.

INTRA-us, And even if you leave the United States you still have to pay US income taxes, the force is with you always.

First off, if you don't work in the US, you don't pay US income taxes. If you're working in the US, then sorry, those are the conditions of the social contract. If you're going to take advantage of the US's services, you have to be willing to pay the costs.

Now, in terms of inside the US, you're right there is a state monopoly, just like theres a monopoly inside of any business. If you work for a company and they demand you work a certain way, do you claim it's immoral because they're imposing a monopoly on their way of doing things? No, that's ridiculous, In the end your employer makes the choice of what working conditions you have, you only have the choice of whether you want to accept them and work there or not. The US works the same way. You can choose to live inside the US and work under the US's terms, or you can move to another country and live under their terms, or you can start your own country.

Government plans have HAD no precedent and have been unmitigated disasters and yet have not been repealed and continue to this day.

Yeah, you keep saying that, e pur si muove. And there was a precedent. Before the dawn of modern society we did have what was essentially anarchy. War and conflict drove us into city-states, and eventually into nation states. Anarchy couldn't survive because any group of individuals that refused to take a side was wiped out. The very fact that Anarchy doesn't exist today is a testament to it's unsustainability.

At 5/8/10 05:53 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: No, what it does is it promotes waste and INEFFICIENCY, when you externalize costs on some third party (Who cannot opt out of payments) and you remove the connection that a provider of a service has to the ones that actually use the service.

Sure, in some respects there will be inefficiencies. That's just the price you pay on the road to reaching optimal economic efficiency. You may be right in the respect that cost per unit will rise a little compared to the market equivalent, but the public highways system more than makes up for this inefficiency by basing the collection of funds on an individual basis.

Let me try and illustrate this. We have 2 men, Jim and Joe. Jim makes $1000 a month and Joe makes $10,000 a month. Lets say the roads take $1200 a month to maintain in a public system. So in the public system (since there's a progressive tax), Jim pays $100 and Joe pays $1100 every month. Anyways, eventually there's this huge revolution and everything gets privatized. In the new privatized system costs are driven down and the roads only cost $1000 a month. The only problem is, what with competition and all, the company really can't do progressive rates, it has to charge a flat fee. So from now on whenever the bills come due, Jim pays $500 and Joe pays $500.

If you view economic efficiency purely in terms of cost per unit, then you'd be right. But that's not what economic efficiency is. In economics we define efficiency as "No one can be made more satisfied, without making someone else less satisfied". And by this definition, clearly the public system is more efficient overall.

A private firm may have a smaller operating budget than a state firm when providing a service that appeals to lower income groups, but that does not mean that the private service will offer less quality to a state monopolized service

Generally, that's exactly what it means. Either it will provide a poorer service, or it will be providing a service that costs more to them than the former service. The free market isn't magic, it doesn't make labor and supplies appear out of thin air.

For one, legitimate competitors do not outlaw competition

The US doesn't have the capacity to outlaw it's competition. Other government's exist, and like I said earlier (and you seem to keep ignoring this), there aren't many barriers that will stop an American from immigrating to other countries.

States function as a de facto cartel

What are you talking about? There is no cartel of government, this a pure fantasy. Governments compete with each other all the time. Why exactly do you think poor countries in Africa have such lax regulations and immigration laws? Because they're trying to attract outside investors. They're competing with other countries for investors. This idea of all the states in the world being in collusion is patently false.

They don't leave their own citizens alone and i doubt they would leave people trying to leave their state em-mass to the extent that people tolerated the aggression.

They don't leave their own citizens alone because they're citizens of the US. Governments by definition govern their citizens, it doesn't make sense for them to "leave them alone". And like I said, the government really doesn't care about a couple of fledgling micro nations in international waters. Nobody is going to impose a trade embargo on you.

Look, in the end what you have to accept is this: you're proposed system has no empirical evidence to support it. None. And nobody wants to run with a system that hasn't been proven. So you and other proponents of your idea better start thinking of ways to test your system before we start thinking of implementing it on a national scale. Because what if we do implement it and it turns out to be a terrible system that drives our economy into the ground? Wouldn't you feel silly?

At 5/8/10 10:30 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote: With the exception of direct defense, people opting out of state services and regulations has no affect on individuals within the state who chose voluntarily to continue to pay taxes to the state.

It does very much have a bearing on the individuals paying into the system, since you'd be taking what is currently a socialized system and privatizing it. Right now many services are only affordable because everyone chooses to pay into them. A national highway system, no matter how many people use it, is going to cost the same amount of money to build. Furthermore, the way our public system work in this country assures that the cost of these services are weighted more heavily on those with more disposable income, and less heavily on those with less to give. This promotes a certain level of economic stability throughout a country, where even the lower echelons of society are able to attain a reasonable standard of living. The private sector cannot produce a service that works like this, anything similar to it has been destroyed by market forces.

This is not because the government's service is inferior to the market service, rather it is because the market weight the opinions of those who have over those who don't. And those who have don't want to give to those who don't, whether or not their wealth is justified.

You assume that the State is simply a legitimate competitor like any member

The State is a legitimate competitor like any other. Or at least, is comparable to the entities that might exist in a state of Market Anarchy. There are very clearly defined borders surrounding our country. All you have to do to leave the voluntary contract is cross one of them.

I don't see

A private entity in MA also has a certain level of discretion when it comes to who they allow in their organization/city-state/whatever. The fact that most countries have restrictions on immigration is not dissimilar to the restrictions private entities would have for entries to their organization. That being said, I think you'll find that immigration regulations are actually rather lax outside of developed countries. You can get a visa to just about any African country just on the merit of being an American citizen.

When a large portion of the people do not regard the state as legitimate, they do not pay their taxes and you're left with a situation where the government must fight a guerrilla war with it's own people without any money.

Fair enough, though I doubt the US government would wage a war against it's citizens, and I think the democratic system would succeed far before something like that ever would.

Even in a situation where this would be possible, which it isn't. (To quote someone else) [quote]

Wonderful. I disagree that immigration laws are a serious barrier into most countries, but it really isn't relevant since we're talking about seasteading.

sea steading might work if States did not impose sanctions on persons or other states that they consider 'threatening'

I didn't just make this idea up. People have actually made sovereign nations at sea. Sure the most of the world might not recognize you as a legitimate country, but who cares? They'll leave you alone. They really don't give a shit about some experimental seastead economy with no natural resources and no slave labor to exploit.

go to http://seasteading.org/ .

Yet that is the root of statism is it not? Government threats of violence

Not really, most people participate in the social contract put forward by the government because they have a vested interested in being part of a regulated society. The "threats of violence" you're referring to really only apply a small minority of citizens who violate the contract put forth by said government.

You're free to leave the contract just like you would in an "anarcho-capitalist" society, but you have to do it on certain terms (also like in an anarcho-capitalist society).

And hey, I've got a question. If you really think the elections in this country are so shitty, then what exactly are you proposing here? Violent revolution? Because if you're going to use the electoral system in place to implement your anarcho-capitalist utopia... the irony would be just palpable.

Here's an idea, why don't you take a couple hundred thousand of like minded people such as yourself and do some seasteading. If your system really is as incredible as you suggest, then you can come back here and rub all of our faces in it (and people will probably be lining up to join your community). But if your society functions the way I predict it will, and your entire economy becomes an unstable, poverty stricken wreck, you can come back and we'll all share some beer and laugh it off. Sound good?

What if instead of trying to put the majority of the punishment on immigrants, we put the punishments on the companies that hired them?

Imagine this: $10,000 fine per immigrant per day if a company is found hiring illegals. Companies will then realize illegal immigrants are more expensive than their worth, and start checking for ID. If there's no work, there's no incentive to move to the US, and the problem solves itself.

At 4/24/10 02:04 AM, Memorize wrote: You really need to get your priorities straight.

This just in: Memorize doesn't know what the word "priorities" means.

At 4/20/10 05:45 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Education has failed, Foreign intervention has failed, Regulation has failed, Welfare has failed, Healthcare has failed, all of these things have failed in spite of the massive increases of state power SPECIFICALLY in these areas

None of these things have "failed". They're flawed, admittedly, but they have not failed. You can't just look at education and say "Hey look! there are some kids in inner city schools that can't afford text books, the entire US educational system is a failure!" That's asinine, and completely unfounded.

You might have had a point if private education wasn't approximately half the price of public education in terms of expenditure per student

Let me spell this out for you. First of all, 43% is a national average. It varies from locale to locale, from state to state. In Hawaii, local property taxes make up something like 1-3% of total public funding for education. Even your glorious private schools wouldn't be able to teach on 1-3% of what public schools use.

Secondly, property taxes do not represent the poor paying money for their own schools. Most low income earners don't own, but rent. This means that a good portion, if not the majority of property taxes in low income areas are coming from landlords. So privatization of education would not only lead to the loss of federal and state funds in these areas, but also the loss of the majority of money that was coming from property taxes.

Thirdly, when you say that private schools operate on half of what public schools do, you don't consider the different conditions private and public school operate under. Private schools have the discretion to expel troublesome or expensive students from their schools, public schools do not. Public schools must provide education for every US citizen, Private schools only provide education to the people they want to. So most likely a chunk of that disparity can be attributed to the freedom private schools have in choosing their students. I'm not saying private schools aren't more efficient than public schools, just that they're probably not THAT much more efficient.

That means the actual number of enrolled students in these countries is probably closer to the world average of 60%, this is fairly impressive given the fact that secondary education is not as essential in a poorer non-information-economy-based country. The percentage is even greater in India.

Not much closer. According to that link you posted about 15% of the kids go to unregistered schools. Now I personally don't know if UNESCO accounts for these schools already in their statistics, but lets assume they don't. That would still leave the statistic at around 35%. Abysmal. And even if they did meet the world average, how is that impressive? Why would Ghana need less educated workers than the rest of the world? They already have hoards of unskilled laborers.

That's exactly why international corporations are able to fuck them so badly. Because of the lack of education in their countries, the unskilled labor market is in oversupply, drastically driving down wages for unskilled laborers. What countries like Ghana DESPERATELY need right now if they want to advance as a nation is an educated work force.

This is going to sound like something Memorize might say, but...

That right there is a litmus test for whether you should be posting or not.

there is no relationship between federal spending on education and the actual quality of education. Spending increases and the quality remains flat or sometimes even falls.

Oh really? There's no relationship between education spending and quality of education? So tell me then, what happens to the quality of education when educational spending goes down to 0 dollars? By that logic right there: nothing, after all there's NO relationship between spending and quality of education.

So obviously that claim is false. Spending does have a direct impact on quality of education, because if you can't afford text books and chalkboards, it's going to be a lot harder to teach. From my experience, this is generally the problem in lower income areas. They simply can't afford the materials they need to teach. They're using beat up, and outdated textbooks, with no resources to print out and assign homework. Rich areas don't have this problem because property taxes are high enough to provide the schools with the funding they need.

I'm interested in seeing the source for that ridiculous claim of yours. Because while it's true that at a certain point spending on education makes less of a difference, I seriously doubt they're arguing that inner city schools wouldn't benefit from increased funding. Or if they are they're idiots.

At 4/19/10 08:56 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: because not once in your life have you ever asked yourself why you should trust THEM

I trust a system that has empirically proven to work. I'm not sure what country you're looking at, but last time I checked we have one of the highest standards of living in the modern world. Somalia... not so much.

Education is paid by property taxes which are collected within the school district.

Property taxes account for about 43% of all school funding (Table 1). The rest of the funding is provided by the state, or the federal government. You might have had a point if property taxes accounted for ALL funding, but unfortunately for you they don't. Schools in poorer areas would not be able to stay open without funding from government sources.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/07/p rivate_schools_for_the_poor.html
http://www.catholiceducation.org/article s/education/ed0319.htm

So what? You're using Ghana as example of your ideal school system now? A country where secondary enrollment is 30%, as in 7 out of 10 people never make it to highschool.

And Ghana's public education system does not function in the same way the US's does. Public schools in Ghana require tuition. Something that doesn't happen in the US for a very specific reason: Because it discourages poor families from enrolling their children in school.

And you're ignoring one final point; Asking me how 'THIS' is supposed to work in a free society ignores the Statist Quo is not working either. Education for the poor is already NOT working. Inner city schools are so rotten to the core that I venture to say a child going through them would be better off getting an education by a job.

It's working in the sense that schools in lower income areas can provide students with basic skills in literacy, mathematics, etc. I agree with you that there are serious problems. But privatizing education? That's a step in the opposite direction. It would exacerbate the problem instead of solving it. Instead of getting a shitty education, poor folks would be getting little to no education. Once again, look at Ghana, your dream country: 30% secondary enrollment rate. This is what happens when you don't provide tuition free education to your citizens.

The correct step to take, is to increase federal and state funding to these poor areas, in order to offset the inequalities created by a system that is largely dependant on property taxes.

At 4/18/10 09:18 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: 1) Name me a scenario and I'll show you why it's not realistic. I dare you. :D

I know you will, not necessarily because the scenario is unrealistic, but because you're so incredibly attached to the idea of pure economic freedom that you're willing to do outstanding mental acrobats in order to rationalize your world view.

You've completely missed the point on education. It's not a question of the overall cost of education, it's a question of proliferation. Most low income earners pay little or nothing into the educational system. Their education costs are heavily subsidized by taxes collected from higher income individuals. In a free market system, these subsidies don't exist, so the cost of getting education skyrockets from the perspective of low income earners. When you and your spouse are earner 20k a year, 6 or even 3 thousand per child is an unreasonable amount of money. In your free market system, the proliferation of education would plummet, and EVERYONE would suffer from the lack of an educated workforce.

At 4/18/10 11:33 PM, Ytaker wrote: They can get scholarships, and loans.

Who's going to loan a non-educated manual laborer enough money to start a business when they:

1) Have no expendable income
2) Have virtually no collateral

Nobody. And Scholarships? I'm sure they help some people, but hundreds of thousands if not millions of people are going to be left behind if scholarships are the only way out of poverty.

At 4/18/10 08:36 PM, SadisticMonkey wrote: So, if i walk onto your property and hold a gun to your head and make you leave and I shoot anybody trying to take it off me, I now own your property then?

Would you just define what you think constitutes ownership already? If it's not through force then by what? Obviously private property doesn't exist in nature, so the only real basis for ownership is who can enforce their claim to ownership. Unless you're going to argue some moral basis for ownership, which would undermine the whole idea of moral nihilism.

At 4/17/10 04:16 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

using force to evict a group of home owners is almost always going to be more expensive than paying off the home owners.

This seems to be the crux of your argument. That in every single scenario, it will always be more profitable to do the things that benefit society as a whole. Always... that is an incredibly broad and risky economic statement. Simply put, it's not true. I'll give you this: In many scenarios a profit motive will lead to good things. But not always. There will be times when it's more profitable to completely screw society over in the pursuit of profit (sustaining the environment is an easy example), and this is where both the laissaize faire society, and the anarcho capitalist society fail.

Now we've been discussing privatized security and the effects of that. But it's very hard to come to definite answers on that subject because there's little empirical evidence to look at. So lets move onto a new, but similar subject.

Barriers to Entry

First, we need to talk about barriers to entry, and why in a free market society, the market becomes over-saturated with unskilled laborers. There are two major barriers that I see: wealth and education. In a pure free market, education is privatized, and if you want your children to be educated, you need to pay for that. The problem is of course that many people cannot afford to take that money out of their budget, so education becomes rare among the poorer echelons of society.

There are two ways to make money in a free market. The first is to work for someone else as an employee and the second is to start your own business. Due to the wealth barrier, many poorer citizens cannot afford to start their own business, and due to education barriers many of the poorer citizens are forced to work as unskilled labor. These barriers to entry are the primary reasons why the poor tend to stay poor in a free market economy.

Saturation of Unskilled Labor

When the market becomes saturated with unskilled labor, businesses and business owners basically call the shots. After all, when there are 10 people willing to take your job if you don't want it, business owners have little to no incentive to provide high wages and quality work environments. If you've ever read the Grapes of Wrath, then you know that the 1930's US market is a perfect example of this. The poor economic climate forced many who previously had other sources of income to enter the unskilled labor market. Of course, any over-saturated labor market is going to be exploited by business, so wages decreased and working conditions got worse.

I'm sure you'll argue that in a situation like this, unskilled laborers will become motivated to go back to school and become educated so that they can enter a more specialized field of labor. This completely ignores all the forces that work against this happening (for example, the barriers to entry). In a system like this, the lower classes have no viable method to escape from their poverty.

The Social contract is founded upon a faulty circular logic the notion that the Edicts of the state are legitimate because it has a legitimate claim to the land which it acquired, yet the ability of a state to legitimately acquire land by declaration or by conquest implies that that state is already legitimate in it's existence.

This is ridiculous. There is no god given definition for legitimacy. There is no natural form of land ownership. It's a human construct. The state's claim to legitimacy is just as valid as any private entity (owning land) that would exist in your anarcho-capitalist utopia.

At 4/16/10 09:24 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: 4) s. Private police would obviously exist but investing in such things as aircraft carriers, tanks, and super expensive and super destructive military weapons serve very little purpose in asymmetrical warfare

If a PMC has enough police to protect it's customers, then it has enough resources to enforce its own laws (they don't require tanks or other "super expensive military weapons" to do this). And a PMC, unlike state provided police, have only a bottom line to answer to. This inevitably leads to large corporations receiving undue weight when it comes to what laws should be enforced.

To a PMC, who's interests are more important? The individual who pays them $50 a month, or the corporation who pays them $50,000,000 a month? Obviously the corporation is more important. So if a corporation says that a couple thousand people need to be evicted from their homes so that the corporation can construct a new manufacturing plant, chances are that the PMC is going to honor the wishes of the corporation over the wishes of the individual.

I'm guessing your argument against this will be that a competitive security company will provide protection for the individuals being evicted. But this assumes there won't be political barriers to protecting the evictees. Chances are any form of private police is going to want contracts with large corporations, so all a corporation needs to do is persuade the PMC's biggest customers to apply pressure to said PMC.

And that's assuming there's any competition at all, which depending on the current state of the market there may not be. There could be just one large PMC that runs all security operations in that geographic area.

And of course this is just one example of how corporatism takes form in a anarcho-capitalist environment. There are still other areas we'll need to address later in this discussion. Namely low wages, poor working conditions, attachment of medical and security benefits to employment, the safety of products produced without regulations, etc.

Obama is a Messaiah, but a highwayman is a highwayman, even though the two perform the same social functions.

We covered this remember? You're not entitled to your money. There's a pretty clear distinction between Obama and a highwayman. Namely that Obama is democratically elected through a government system that is given it's power through an unwritten social contract, while the highway man is an individual who is breaking our society's set laws.

At 4/14/10 08:24 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Run by multiple emergent entities competing on the market**

Maybe at first, but you're advocating anarcho-capitalism correct? If that's the fact, a company has no incentive to respect your "right to your life and your money". What happens without a democratic government, is one of 2 things.

1. A particularly strong corporation amasses the resource to forcefully establish itself as a state
2. Several corporations that hold the majority of the nation's resources form a pact and establish an oligarchy

This is probably why GumOnShoe was calling it corporatism, because in the end the corporations DO have legislative power because they end up with enough influence to enforce their own laws.

At 4/14/10 07:08 PM, zero-gravity wrote: Democracy failing in the respect that people didn't vote for sound policies or for logical reasons, they voted for hope allowing FDR to push his agenda w/o the public realizing what that agenda was or if it was good for them or not.

Democracy succeeded in the respect that it demonstrably led to positive changes in the work environment via government intervention. You can argue that the public didn't understand FDR's agenda and if it was in their benefit, but the fact of the matter is FDR's election and subsequent reelections did bring about market reform that benefited the lower income classes.

At 4/13/10 08:05 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote: Democracy as a regulator? That's more absurd than saying that consumers can regulate Big Business by picking and CHOOSING which system or 'product' they prefer. Voters, like Consumers, (as Poxpower rightly notes) Are completely ignorant, they have no preferences and no desire to protect themselves against unscrupulous Politicians who have already granted themselves a Duopoly, who, in the pursuit of profits, will reward the Rich and Punish the poor.

You say this despite the empirical evidence to the contrary. Democracy has proven itself in practice to be an effective regulator of government (and in turn, business). I say this speaking comparatively of course, no system is perfect, but just look at the work conditions in the 20's-40's and compare them to what they are today. They were terrible; in the more extreme cases we had child laborers being killed or maimed by machinate they had no business operating the first place.

In the late 1930's people got fed up and democratically elected FDR who imposed regulations of the free market as was the will of the people. Working conditions got better.

That's just one example of countless times in history when democracy has effectively regulated society. Are there times when this system has failed? Undoubtedly! But no system is ever going to be perfect once humans get involved; that's the unfortunate reality.