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At 8/18/10 06:49 AM, QuantumPenguin wrote: Entirely out of context.

Um, what was out of context?

What you say is already untrue, you can not save every life in a capitalist economy.

*********NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH**********************

Nobody ever dies in Europe!

You heard it here first!

At 8/18/10 06:52 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: *********NEWS FLASH NEWS FLASH**********************

Nobody ever dies in Europe!

You heard it here first!

This is false logic, non-mathie. It's possible to save every life in a socalist society, it isn't in a capitalist one. Simply because neither have occured doesn't alter the premise.

hahahahahahah

its possible to save every life

hahahah this is brilliant

jesus runs europes healthcare apparently

and now you're just reaching, I'll assume you probably didn't understand the page. Perhaps instead of littering these threads with adhominem attacks on people's economic knowledge you should learn some real maths yourself.

Maybe governments are just too busy with other issues to make rich people do a thing where they all pay 50$ a year to the same charity/charities? I have no idea though, there is probably a bigger reason behind it.

At 8/18/10 07:47 AM, QuantumPenguin wrote: and now you're just reaching, I'll assume you probably didn't understand the page.

Capitalism leads to better consequences. therefore capitalism is "better".

What is fallacious about that?

Perhaps instead of littering these threads with adhominem attacks on people's economic knowledge

They don't understand economics and yet they're criticising economic theories. they're not supprting their claims with economic reasoning and making statements that don't make any sense, which leads me to the conclusion that they don't understand economics (which they don't).

you should learn some real maths yourself.

What does maths have to do with anything here?

At 8/18/10 08:05 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

At 8/18/10 07:47 AM, QuantumPenguin wrote: and now you're just reaching, I'll assume you probably didn't understand the page.

Capitalism leads to better consequences. therefore capitalism is "better".

What is fallacious about that?

It's fallacious because it isn't real logic. Consequences don't imply premises. This might help.

At 8/18/10 08:15 AM, QuantumPenguin wrote: It's fallacious because it isn't real logic. Consequences don't imply premises. This might help.

How about this: Most people value aggregate utility. Capitalism results in the greatest aggregate utility compared to other systems. Therefore, capitalism is better at satisfying most people's values than other systems.

At 8/18/10 08:44 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: Capitalism results in the greatest aggregate utility compared to other systems.

This is not necessarily true, given the huge amount of proposed post-capitalist economic models. Capitalism should be viewed as a necessary evil, not an ideal economic system. It will inevitably be replaced once capital becomes truly redundant.

At 8/18/10 06:42 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: haha

"Look what the FREE MARKET is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR"

"uh yeah we don't actually have free markets..."

"well...well...it wouldn't work anyway, so there!!"

Anyway, healthcare used to work in America until government interfered.

Oh yah an entirely biased article, next thing you'll be saying that European hospitals kill some of their patients on purpose to rid the waiting line.

Well let's see this claim that 80 years ago our healthcare was too cheap and accessible from a more unbiased article perhaps from a medical site?

"1930 I The Sick Don't Seek Care

One hundred and twenty thousand people are sick each day who should go to the hospital. Of this number only 50 percent are hospitalized. From the Bulletin."

Here's the link

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/17/10 11:07 PM, Warforger wrote:

But thats not what caused it was it? And guess what President got us out of it? Franklin Roosevelt. What did he do? Introduced Social Security. Doesn't mean Social Security got us out was it?

Why is it that people credit FDR for getting us out of a depression for the simple fact that it merely ended?

I mean really...

A typical major recession in the US only lasts a couple years (typically).

So why is it that FDR gets credit for ending a near 2-decade Depression when he was president 12 full fucking years?

It didn't start under him which is what your assuming.

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: Let's say we have two major recessions under identical conditions.

1 lasts for 2 years and the other lasts for 10.

Why in the love of God would anyone consider the 10-year recession a success?

The Great depression occurred about 3 years before FDR took office...

FDR was then elected 4 damn times, and the Depression still didn't end until after FDR was dead.

Correction, he died in 1945, the Depression had ended a few years earlier.

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: Are you honestly going to tell me with a straight face that after 12 years of being President (elected 4 times)

16 years, 4x3=12

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: which is longer than the 8 years people can be elected on today, on top of the fact that the Depression didn't really end until after he killed over... that FDR gets credit for ending it?

What. The. Fuck.

So your saying that the Greatest Depression the world has ever seen in the modern age should only take one or two years to get out of. Genius.

At 8/18/10 04:59 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: okay these ~10,000,000 square km are magically all mine and if you want to live here you have to do everything I say".

Basically your argument entirely comes down to scale.
It's ok to own 1 square mile, but 10 000? Man no way!

And borrowing money has tons of uses.

Like ruining your economy....

Or, you know, starting companies and buying things.

But, it doesn't matter. I can show through economic reasoning why pretty much any state controls you can suggest are bad.

Ok state controls on oil rigs in the gulf of mexico.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAND, GO!

My guess for your argument "Well it didn't fail to prevent a disaster, thus proving it sucks!".

I gotta know where you got THAT one from!

lol come on everyone knows this

Yeah great source there, Glenn Beck.

I'm not even an economist and I could easily demonstrate how obviously wrong he was about what he was saying.

Yeah I'm sure you can.
Why don't you email him and let him know he's a dumbass?

At 8/18/10 02:28 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 8/18/10 04:59 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: okay these ~10,000,000 square km are magically all mine and if you want to live here you have to do everything I say".

Basically your argument entirely comes down to scale.
It's ok to own 1 square mile, but 10 000? Man no way!

And borrowing money has tons of uses.

Like ruining your economy....

Or, you know, starting companies and buying things.

I would rather not try and fight Sadistic's battles for him, but I have a few gripes with this post and of course with more of what the OP was saying that i didn't real deal with in the previous two posts i made.

Borrowing and lending has it's social functions. The original issue is whether or not a 'voluntary tax' (Gripe No. 1) ought be issued, PRESUMABLY on savings. (I don't know if the OP's ideas were as refined, but his post gave me the impression that He disliked the fact that "The Rich" However you define it, are keeping their money in a bank instead of SPENDING it on something)

Technically you could say that the government is already doing in large part what the OP suggests. (Or is very close to doing) Interest rates are nearly at zero and some Economists are advocating that the fed enact a negative interest rate policy to promote lending. One part of the Fed's low interest rate policy is to make the government's massive borrowing of money to finance their expenditures affordable, and depositors are already being socked with these low interest rates in that the money that are holding in the bank is accumulating almost nothing and I'm fairly confident that the actual nominal prices of goods as well as changes in exchange rates are actually rendering the benefits of savings one's money negative or as close to zero as imaginable.

But enough of that Tangent. Borrowing DOES have it's social function. And it was either a wrongheaded argument or a bad word usage on Sadistic's part to say otherwise. However, Financing the borrowing of someone who comes to you with a credit history and a good business plan is not the same as financing the borrowing of the federal government, at least it isn't in present history.

As for the land monopoly question. what constitutes "State" might seem ambiguous in theory but isn't in practice. And the distinction between the land claim of a state and the land claim of a non state individual or group of individuals acting collectively has rather obvious historical implications. State's claim territories which they have not touched, often by ex-ante decrees or conquest. Private land claims are only considered legitimate if; 1) The territory has not been claimed and the agency has developed some degree of infrastructure around that territory, hence 'homesteading' 2) The territory was purchase at a price voluntarily agreed upon by the prior owners, assuming those prior owners acquired the territory in the same aforementioned manner.

However your point is not without merit, and because distinctions between the state and private institutions are not ideal, you can also take a 'spectrum' approach when it comes to states and private institutions. In My opinion, the smaller GEOGRAPHICALLY a state becomes, the less it is able to behave as a state and the more it must essentially behave as a market participant. Imagine that private property owners all have power to impose 'laws' or, quite simply, rules concerning acceptable behavior within a given geographic area. You could call a 'no smoking policy' in a private office building, a 'law' of the 'state' that is the private company that owns the area of the building.

Of course the monstrous difference in size between this office building and the US federal Gvt, changes the way these two different 'private property owners' can behave.

The massive size of the US's claimed territory, and the fact that it claims areas that it has not touched, and the fact that all territories are claimed by these 'states' with no practicable means of establishing alternatives, means that States can impose significantly more onerous restrictions on various interactions, material or otherwise, that a private owner of a small building could not simply conceive.

That is because whereas avoiding the 'laws' of the private building is simply a matter of walking a few meters away, Evading 'US Federal Government' policy almost always involves abandoning your family, your friends, [very often] your language, your culture, your job, and your home. And since every state does this, (states themselves effective act as a land cartel) The love it or leave it argument is incredible disingenuous when your choices are limited by these social, economic, and political hurtles.

With this logic in mind, we can conceive what we might consider to be a 'total and absolute state', which essentially opposes all freedom of choice what-so-ever. This state would have to be a one world state that claims the entire planet and can also prevent such things as ocean settlements [Rapture and the like] as well as space settlements if it ever becomes possible [The moon is a harsh mistress after all].

Under this state of affairs, the love it or leave it argument is not only disingenuous, it is invalid. A state of this kind may or may not involve what you euphemistically call 'representative democracy', but the global scale of the party system that would emerge under such a hypothetical state of affairs would make elected politicians so distant from the electorate that this state would essentially operate as a de-facto oligarchy.

If such a state could sustain itself, which i do not think it could. We can imagine that the impossibility of migration and the ineffectiveness of elections to bring about individual choice would result in a political system of pure 'personal government' a State that exists for of, by, and for it's own sake and could impose any laws it very well pleased on the population.

On the other end of the spectrum would be a very tiny state, So if you had a state the size of hong kong, neighbored by other states of similar sizes, you would have a situation where that state simply could not impose it's will nearly as easily, though it could still impose SOME will. Number one, this state would be forced to engage in free trade with neighboring states, since it lacks the geographic size to have self sufficiency whilst maintaining a modern economic standard of living. This is why Hong Kong has virtually zero tariffs, it does it out of necessity. Provided that migration were free between these states, the states themselfs would behave [Even if there were no elections] LESS like authoritarian douchebags and more like companies. They would have to compete for tax revenues in a way that modern states simply do not, that means they would have to DISCOVER the laws which are most practicable and beneficial to businesses, workers, and consumers in general.

Under this system you might see states having varied laws depending on demographic makeup, and instead of brutal conflicts where partisans attempt to force their way on each other, each state would design laws catering to different societal 'values'. Imposing one's values would be difficult as individuals could relatively easily move to states which were more or less authoritarian depending on their interests.

Whereas large states are desensitized to the effects of bad policy, smaller states behave more like market agents to the extent that they are geographically small. And you can say that absent the US federal government and it's various subsidiaries, the states and localities, simply exist a network of millions of various individual 'states' with property claims of their own.

The other issue that individual property holders have that states do not, and this is something i lack the characters to discuss in full, is the issue of non-violent competition. That is, companies grow and shrink through either cost-cutting or through innovation as oppose to violence whose costs are externalized through taxation.

I want to say more but i don't have any space for it.

At 8/18/10 01:48 PM, Warforger wrote:

It didn't start under him which is what your assuming.

Uh... it's a pretty well documented FACT that it didn't start under FDR...

Correction, he died in 1945, the Depression had ended a few years earlier.

Wrong.

The economy was only "slightly better" because of a war-time economy.

ie. Drafting people against their will into war, and producing bombs.

Are you going to tell me that you advocate going to world war and into a war-time production economy every time there's a recession?

No?

Then how about a real solution than: Death, debt, and crumbling infrastructure?

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: Are you honestly going to tell me with a straight face that after 12 years of being President (elected 4 times)

16 years, 4x3=12

He died right after his 4th election, numbnuts

He was elected 4 times, but served a full 12 years before dying.

Good grief...

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: which is longer than the 8 years people can be elected on today, on top of the fact that the Depression didn't really end until after he killed over... that FDR gets credit for ending it?

What. The. Fuck.

So your saying that the Greatest Depression the world has ever seen in the modern age should only take one or two years to get out of. Genius.

Uh... hello.

We had an even GREATER, BIGGER crash in 1920.

Want to know when it ended?

1921.

LOL!

Genius.

At 8/18/10 10:30 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:
However, Financing the borrowing of someone who comes to you with a credit history and a good business plan is not the same as financing the borrowing of the federal government, at least it isn't in present history.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

States can impose significantly more onerous restrictions on various interactions, material or otherwise, that a private owner of a small building could not simply conceive.

It's hard to understand without examples.
Give me examples of what couldn't be done privately that governments can do.

That is because whereas avoiding the 'laws' of the private building is simply a matter of walking a few meters away,

There are such things as plantations and worker villages today and you don't walk away from them too easily. You live and often die on them and they're fenced and guarded. Nothing prevents a company from using force to get what they want.

The love it or leave it argument is incredible disingenuous when your choices are limited by these social, economic, and political hurtles.

And yet Mexicans do it constantly.

Under this state of affairs, the love it or leave it argument is not only disingenuous, it is invalid.

Yeah, I know.
And it equally doesn't apply to MAKE jobs and services despite the free market people's idea that if you hate a service or job you can just leave it to find something better.

Doesn't work for countries and it doesn't work for companies. Sometimes, you have to FORCE a change.

They would have to compete for tax revenues in a way that modern states simply do not

That entire theory breaks down the moment people aren't free to leave, and absolutely nothing says companies can't do whatever they want, including keeping people captive.

Imposing one's values would be difficult as individuals could relatively easily move to states which were more or less authoritarian depending on their interests.

I think that used to be called "the village system" like in Africa, where it has flourished so well for them over the history of mankind. Oh..wait :, (

All you'll ever get from that is a slow but constant fragmentation of cultures and languages that will actually make it so that you CAN'T move around anymore because everyone outside your city is too different.

smaller states

You mean CITIES? I don't see any indication that mayors govern any better or smarter than governors or presidents.

At 8/18/10 11:34 PM, poxpower wrote:

And it equally doesn't apply to MAKE jobs and services

Er to "MANY".
Man I thought I had re-read that. OH WELL.

At 8/18/10 11:29 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/18/10 01:48 PM, Warforger wrote:

It didn't start under him which is what your assuming.

Uh... it's a pretty well documented FACT that it didn't start under FDR...

You sounded like it.

At 8/18/10 11:29 PM, Memorize wrote:

Correction, he died in 1945, the Depression had ended a few years earlier.

Wrong.

The economy was only "slightly better" because of a war-time economy.

ie. Drafting people against their will into war, and producing bombs.

Are you going to tell me that you advocate going to world war and into a war-time production economy every time there's a recession?

No?

Then how about a real solution than: Death, debt, and crumbling infrastructure?

No. However, your going to say that when the soldiers got home the economy wasn't booming? Also since when was Depression the same as a recession?

At 8/18/10 11:29 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: Are you honestly going to tell me with a straight face that after 12 years of being President (elected 4 times)

16 years, 4x3=12

He died right after his 4th election, numbnuts

He was elected 4 times, but served a full 12 years before dying.

Good grief...

I'd like to know your English or Ecomics teacher as well so I can punch her/him in the face for teaching you that a recession is the same as a depression.

At 8/18/10 11:29 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/17/10 11:46 PM, Memorize wrote: which is longer than the 8 years people can be elected on today, on top of the fact that the Depression didn't really end until after he killed over... that FDR gets credit for ending it?

What. The. Fuck.

So your saying that the Greatest Depression the world has ever seen in the modern age should only take one or two years to get out of. Genius.

Uh... hello.

We had an even GREATER, BIGGER crash in 1920.

Want to know when it ended?

1921.

LOL!

Genius.

I must be missing something. Every graph I see shows that the 1929 crash was worse then the one in 1920, everything points to the 1929 crash being worse then the one in 1921 to the point that the one in 1921 just looks like it was a slight trip.

At 8/18/10 11:34 PM, poxpower wrote:

At 8/18/10 10:30 PM, SmilezRoyale wrote:
However, Financing the borrowing of someone who comes to you with a credit history and a good business plan is not the same as financing the borrowing of the federal government, at least it isn't in present history.

I'm not sure what you mean by that.

This is going to sound a little bit simplistic but here's the jist of it...

1) I finance a loan to a business man with a good credit history to start up a firm that sells goods or services on the market. If those goods are more valued than the money put into the business over time then society benefits from the investment and i get back my loan with interest.

#1 = Good

2) Foreign institutions finance federal spending on wars, unsustainable entitlements, and all manner of shady and otherwise irrational adventures by buying US dollars.

#2 = Bad

It's hard to understand without examples.
Give me examples of what couldn't be done privately that governments can do.

I can sympathize with that...

What i mean is that McDonalds can't throw you out of of the country if you refuse to buy their food because they don't own the country. You don't lose your Job, language, family, friends, etc. etc. from disassociating with McDonalds and thus McDonalds isn't in nearly as powerful a bargaining position as, say, if McDonalds owned the territory claimed by the US government and thus had a 'land monopoly' of all fast food production and distribution.

That is because whereas avoiding the 'laws' of the private building is simply a matter of walking a few meters away,

There are such things as plantations and worker villages today and you don't walk away from them too easily. You live and often die on them and they're fenced and guarded. Nothing prevents a company from using force to get what they want.

I've already dealt with the infeasibility of bizarre encirclement scenarios concerning the notions of 'profitable slavery'. Unless there is a specific rather than theoretical case of this you think I have not discussed adequately, or something about the argument I put before on the feasibility of profitable slavery that is logically incorrect, I do not want to make another 5 post response on this issue again.

Until then, i contend it is more profitable to deal with people on a voluntary basis.

The love it or leave it argument is incredible disingenuous when your choices are limited by these social, economic, and political hurtles.

And yet Mexicans do it constantly.

I am not saying that it is impossible. Let me ask you this, how bad can you imagine it would have to be for a Mexican to go through the trouble of immigrating to the United States, legally or not?

The point is that, ignoring slave markets created by state kleptocracies and civil wars, the choice between the selection of privately provided goods does not involve 'choice' of the kind where you and your family cross the desert into a foreign land in hopes of a better life.

Under this state of affairs, the love it or leave it argument is not only disingenuous, it is invalid.

Yeah, I know.
And it equally doesn't apply to MAKE jobs and services despite the free market people's idea that if you hate a service or job you can just leave it to find something better.

Then you DON'T know. If you can't see the difference between

1) Canceling a market subscription of one kind for another being a minor inconvenience
2) Leaving a job for another being obnoxious but not terribly onerous
3) Migrating to another country and adopting another way of life in order to estape economic or political opression
4) Not being able to do anything at all because the entire planet is claimed by a single state

Then you don't understand competition in any respect. Be it market competition or electoral competition.

It's as vapid as saying that colors are not valid concepts because all colors are perceptions of wave frequencies, and since they are all wave frequencies they are all the same, even though the degree of the frequency is difference and that is why it is beneficial to categorize the various frequencies according to those degrees.

Doesn't work for countries and it doesn't work for companies. Sometimes, you have to FORCE a change.

Please put your romantic rhetoric into a context i can understand, because I REALLY understand the logic of this.

They would have to compete for tax revenues in a way that modern states simply do not

That entire theory breaks down the moment people aren't free to leave, and absolutely nothing says companies can't do whatever they want, including keeping people captive.

You are right when you say that migration controls are a tool that a state can use to TRY to prevent the process of disassociation from bad states from taking place. But large states are better at enforcing those migration controls.

Think "Berlin Wall". West berlin was economically more prosperous than the eastern half and hence the exodus across the wall, even though the penalty for doing so often times meant death.

But when it comes to state size, it's important to look at a migration relative to the tax revenues of a given state. if 2 million Chinese leave the area claimed by China, that counts for less than one tenth of one percent of their population that pays taxes to the Chinese state. If 2 million people left a state with a much smaller geographic area to collect it's taxes, it would have that much more of an impact.

That means that a state with competitive laws that doesn't need to fund a migration gestapo, paid for with it's own taxes, to make sure people aren't leaving the country and thus no longer paying taxes. Any state that takes the path of bad laws enforced by migration controls is at a disadvantage; this is the case even with large governments as seen with the Berlin wall, but would be enhanced under a system of smaller states.

Imposing one's values would be difficult as individuals could relatively easily move to states which were more or less authoritarian depending on their interests.

I think that used to be called "the village system" like in Africa, where it has flourished so well for them over the history of mankind. Oh..wait :, (

How Childish... African societies lacked a government for centuries because they never developed a division of labor, i already discussed this. There were no African river valley civilizations and so there was no surplus to make a state even feasible. This logic should be obvious; you can't have a government that takes 50% of your income until you develop an economy that can support such a massive government. On another Modern Africa is chaotic today because African states were artificial constructions of technocrats drawing lines on a map without regard to tribes. The violence in Africa is attributable to the various tribes battling for control of the ideological apparatus of the state. The solution isn't this ridiculous "Panafricanism" But to abolish the present states in Africa completely and at least allow different tribes to have their own emergent states with borders having a far more rational criteria of delineation

All you'll ever get from that is a slow but constant fragmentation of cultures and languages that will actually make it so that you CAN'T move around anymore because everyone outside your city is too different.

With places of residence you typically get clustering, not fragmentation. The fragmentation you see is that Atheists and fundies don't live under the same state and thus will not constantly battle one another for control of power. In terms of residence they will cluster in areas sharing their values, or as close to as realistically possible.

smaller states

You mean CITIES? I don't see any indication that mayors govern any better or smarter than governors or presidents.

Is that a complaint against the Theory i am putting forward, or is that some empirically grounded problem with what I've said?

At 8/18/10 02:28 PM, poxpower wrote: Basically your argument entirely comes down to scale.
It's ok to own 1 square mile, but 10 000? Man no way!

No, notice how I said magically.

Like I said, are you even familiar with the Lockean concept of property?

Or, you know, starting companies and buying things.

Private individuals/companies who are connected to the structure of production investing money in new enterprises = good

Countries borrowing gargantuan sums of money that they'll never be able to repay without completely devaluing their own currency in order to fund some retarded "stimulus spending" which actually in the long run makes things worse for an economy by artificially allowing malinvestments to subsist which prevents capital from being freed up for legitimately profitable ventures = bad

Ok state controls on oil rigs in the gulf of mexico.

I'm talking about economic controls, things to make the economy better etc. Those are environmental controls, things to protect the environment.

Regardless, this and the link in it sum things up pretty well.

Yeah I'm sure you can.
Why don't you email him and let him know he's a dumbass?

Well obviously that would be fruitless. And besides, Austrian scholars always refute his work, its not as if he's going to respond or anything. He works for the banks and has no interest in intellectual discourse.

At 8/19/10 12:40 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

2) Foreign institutions finance federal spending on wars, unsustainable entitlements, and all manner of shady and otherwise irrational adventures by buying US dollars.

But they make their money back. Someone lending money cares only about making money.
What's your point here?

I've already dealt with the infeasibility of bizarre encirclement scenarios concerning the notions of 'profitable slavery'.

No, you just keep saying that it will fix itself because it's not profitable.
But IT IS profitable.

IT WORKS. It exists and it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxcPgAVV4 vU

the choice between the selection of privately provided goods does not involve 'choice' of the kind where you and your family cross the desert into a foreign land in hopes of a better life.

For YOU maybe, who lives in a rich country.
Many places they leave everything behind to look for work or resources. They have no social net and are dependent on the whims of nature.

4) Not being able to do anything at all because the entire planet is claimed by a single state

There is one thing you can do: pick up a gun.
That's how the USA was created.

That's what would inevitably have to happen in an unregulated free-for-all world. Eventually a population will exceed their territory's resources and they'll come FOR YOURS no matter how legitimate a claim you have on it.

Eventually you'll have to pick up a gun no matter what system you're under.

Any state that takes the path of bad laws enforced by migration controls is at a disadvantage

Do you notice how long they manage to keep their shitty rules going? And how suddenly it can come back?
That tells me that this idea that shitty laws will be ironed out naturally maybe isn't so solid.

There were no African river valley civilizations and so there was no surplus to make a state even feasible etc

Well you have a chicken and the egg question here.
Does prosperity bring about a state or does a state bring about prosperity?

That's a pretty hard question to answer I imagine but it seems to me that if your idea is correct, that people who can move around from place to place will eventually congregate into some kind of freedom paradise and prosper beyond everyone else, then it should have happened SOMEWHERE by now.

I think there's a flaw in your idea somewhere and it may very well be that a free market society inevitably turns into a state anyway.

In terms of residence they will cluster in areas sharing their values, or as close to as realistically possible.

And then eventually a schism happens, a group breaks off and makes a new culture.
Hence: fragmentation.
Once a culture has broken off from the parent culture, they don't re-integrate it, it becomes a separate one.

smaller states

You mean CITIES? I don't see any indication that mayors govern any better or smarter than governors or presidents.

Is that a complaint against the Theory i am putting forward, or is that some empirically grounded problem with what I've said?

Your argument is that as the range of governance becomes smaller, rules have to become better faster to keep up.
But where the hell do you see that happening? Cities are run just as badly as states or countries.

People don't leave their homes that easily and that's true both for arguments about shitty governments and arguments about shitty employment and services.

At 8/19/10 01:10 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

Like I said, are you even familiar with the Lockean concept of property?

Only vaguely

Private individuals/companies who are connected to the structure of production investing money in new enterprises = good

Countries borrowing gargantuan sums of money that they'll never be able to repay without completely devaluing their own currency in order to fund some retarded "stimulus spending" which actually in the long run makes things worse for an economy by artificially allowing malinvestments to subsist which prevents capital from being freed up for legitimately profitable ventures = bad

That sure is a fair comparison of the only two possible ways to spend borrowed money.

Those are environmental controls, things to protect the environment.

Do you know how much companies bitch about those controls because they affect their profit margins? Or safety regulations? Or worker rights?

If you grant that the government has a right to tell a company how it should be run for these reasons, why stop there?

In fact I don't even know what you're really against other than naming random shitty government policies to make some kind of case against... something...

Well obviously that would be fruitless. And besides, Austrian scholars always refute his work, its not as if he's going to respond or anything. He works for the banks and has no interest in intellectual discourse.

Hum don't the "austrian scholars" also work for university grants, the government or for banks?

I like how one of the founders was one of the guys who influenced Ronald Reagan the most. Yeah that sure helped his sound financial planning a lot.

The Austrian School: Blame us for republicans!
*cheap shot*

At 8/19/10 02:01 AM, poxpower wrote: Only vaguely

In a stateless society, depending on the 'regional zeitgeist' if you will, property will be determined more on less by homesteading. Hence, individuals/companies can't just arbitrarily claim to whole millions of acres of land that they've never even touched, let alone improved upon in any way, unlike states who do just this.

That sure is a fair comparison of the only two possible ways to spend borrowed money.

Tell me: Is borrowing over 4 billion dollars a day a good thing?

If you grant that the government has a right to tell a company how it should be run for these reasons, why stop there?

I'm talking about economics, not about whether the state should/should be able to protect the environment in this way.

My point is that these controls aren't necessary. Presupposing a state with fiat land claim, then I am in favour of some environmental controls. But free-market property environmental regulation is preferable because people defending the respective environmental areas are connected to the property because their livelihoods depend on it.
As long as the public don't find out about it, the state has no real interest in preventing pollution, for example.

In fact I don't even know what you're really against other than naming random shitty government policies to make some kind of case against... something...

You said "oh look all economists favour the state therefore you're wrong"

and I said that regardless of whatever what most mainstream economists supposedly believe, I can show how pretty much all government economic intervention is bad. The point beingis that if I'm right, I'm right. It doesn't matter what some economists think.

Hum don't the "austrian scholars" also work for university grants, the government or for banks?

The austrians tend to work for private universities, and most are associated with the mises institute which is a private academic organisation.

They most fertianly don't work for banks, because their views are completely at odds with the interests of the banks i.e. they're against state economic involvement, whereas the banks thrive on it.

*cheap shot*

yeah, that's an extremely cheap shot considering that pretty much no republicans have ever had policies in line with the teaching of the austrian school.

Except ron paul, but there's no way the banks/corporations/vanilla socialist democrat types will ever let him become president.

At 8/19/10 03:14 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: and I said that regardless of whatever what most mainstream economists supposedly believe, I can show how pretty much all government economic intervention is bad. The point beingis that if I'm right, I'm right. It doesn't matter what some economists think.

I hope this is just trolling and that you don't seriously believe this. You sound like a religious nut. They say that kind of thing all the time. You think you've figured out the universe based on your frail not-even-rudimentary understanding of economics. You are wrong.

Here's the point: You talk a lot with no proof, because you have none. How could you possibly have when yesterday you didn't even understand basic propositional logic? It's a tick essential.

Promise me you'll never go into economic science or any science with such a terrible attitude.

At 8/19/10 03:14 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote:

In a stateless society, depending on the 'regional zeitgeist' if you will, property will be determined more on less by homesteading. Hence, individuals/companies can't just arbitrarily claim to whole millions of acres of land that they've never even touched, let alone improved upon in any way, unlike states who do just this.

One of the points of owning territory is national defense.
But I guess if you think that's pointless.. well...

Tell me: Is borrowing over 4 billion dollars a day a good thing?

Haha.

Smilez can answer that one for me.

My point is that these controls aren't necessary.

Which controls exactly?
Is a minimum salary a control? Or health inspections? Or building safety codes?
?

because their livelihoods depend on it.

I guess you never heard about Easter Island.
People suck at planning ahead is the lesson here. It's no less true when their lives depend on it.

As long as the public don't find out about it, the state has no real interest in preventing pollution, for example.

Nope. No one does in fact. Except the people who are being polluted on, which strangely aren't usually the same as the ones doing the polluting.

You said "oh look all economists favour the state therefore you're wrong"

No, you just said that "people who know anything about economics are against the state" and then when I bring up that most economists are for state controls, you went with "well fuck them, they're just tools".

Basically your intention was to make it sound like experts were on your side and when that proved to be false, you just decided to ignore the experts anyway.

The austrians tend to work for private universities

Not the founders of the movement, they became finance ministers.
I guess they were the biggest tools of all!

They most fertianly don't work for banks

well maybe that's true, I dunno

At 8/18/10 12:24 PM, Warforger wrote:

At 8/18/10 06:42 AM, SadisticMonkey wrote: haha

"Look what the FREE MARKET is DIRECTLY RESPONSIBLE FOR"

"uh yeah we don't actually have free markets..."

"well...well...it wouldn't work anyway, so there!!"

Anyway, healthcare used to work in America until government interfered.

Oh yah an entirely biased article, next thing you'll be saying that European hospitals kill some of their patients on purpose to rid the waiting line.

Well let's see this claim that 80 years ago our healthcare was too cheap and accessible from a more unbiased article perhaps from a medical site?

"1930 I The Sick Don't Seek Care

One hundred and twenty thousand people are sick each day who should go to the hospital. Of this number only 50 percent are hospitalized. From the Bulletin."

Here's the link

Looking back I forgot that the article was done in 1997, so I guess I'll argue for 1910. I looked it up, and it turns out in 1910 Healthcare was abundant AND was cheap, however, most healthcare was done at HOME by your family, who most of the time aren't professionals, doctors were expensive and medicine was cheap, guess how we fixed this problem? We made civlian hospitals.

So I guess if the writer of the article would want us to ban hospitals and make healthcare at home then I guess thats what you must be supporting as well.

At 8/19/10 12:03 AM, Warforger wrote:

No. However, your going to say that when the soldiers got home the economy wasn't booming? Also since when was Depression the same as a recession?

Oh, you mean them coming home after he died?\\

The war didn't end with FDR, you know.

I'd like to know your English or Ecomics teacher as well so I can punch her/him in the face for teaching you that a recession is the same as a depression.

I'd like to punch YOU in the face for failing to learn how to read.

Also, the recession of 1929 didn't become a "Depression until years later.

Did you know that FDR accused Hoover of being a socialist during their campaigns?

I must be missing something. Every graph I see shows that the 1929 crash was worse then the one in 1920, everything points to the 1929 crash being worse then the one in 1921 to the point that the one in 1921 just looks like it was a slight trip.

1st off: The worst of the Depression didn't even occur in 1929.
Secondly... how can you call this a "recovery"?

The high point is 400 and by the time WWII starts, all he can do is get it back to 150 in 2 terms?

At 8/19/10 01:37 AM, poxpower wrote:

At 8/19/10 12:40 AM, SmilezRoyale wrote:

2) Foreign institutions finance federal spending on wars, unsustainable entitlements, and all manner of shady and otherwise irrational adventures by buying US dollars.

But they make their money back. Someone lending money cares only about making money.
What's your point here?

Well for one, whether they are going to get their money back now is even in question, and for good reason. But whether or not the lender gets his money back is of secondary importance to whether or not the loan finances something that is actually beneficial. XD

I've already dealt with the infeasibility of bizarre encirclement scenarios concerning the notions of 'profitable slavery'.

No, you just keep saying that it will fix itself because it's not profitable.
But IT IS profitable.

IT WORKS. It exists and it works.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xxcPgAVV4 vU

I have a number of problems with this Documentary, if slavery is "Illegal" by the laws of the state of Brazil, then is it not safe to assume that the state has dealt with the problem? If the state hasn't dealt with the problem, why, unless this supposed system of forced labor was institutionally protected. I never saw barbed wire or armed guards. Why were the producers of the film permitted to speak to the workers and seemed to ONLY do just that. This wasn't like the lecture you posted before on human trafficking where someone went through the trouble of explaining these problems in a causal manner.

For YOU maybe, who lives in a rich country.
Many places they leave everything behind to look for work or resources. They have no social net and are dependent on the whims of nature.

Yes, having wealth makes choice easier. And since you enjoy FACTSFACTSFACTS, and correlations so much, Here's one for you.

http://www.freetheworld.com/papers/Ayal_
and_Karras.pdf
http://www.freetheworld.com/efw_previous .html

There is one thing you can do: pick up a gun.
That's how the USA was created.

Like i said there are reasons why I believe that a state of this kind wouldn't survive long. There presently isn't a very strong ideological backing for a one world government, at least not around the world. Most people have nationalist aspirations so attempts to institute a one world state "de-jure"
would fail. De-Facto world states on the other hand are far more practical because the nature of the one world state is not seen.

Of course this argument contradicts your previous point only a state can protect people from violent land monopolies. If you think violent revolution is capable of solving a situation of duress then obviously you have no fear of 'indefinite exploitative land monopolies'. If a private company establishes a slave plantation in a 1 mile radius and I happen to be in that area, I am forever trapped. But under a hypothetical one world government with the capacity to amass the world's resources for it's self-serving military all i have to do is get a gun license and start a violent revolution.

Now if you are wondering I am not for or against violent revolution per-say, depending upon how it is managed. Overthrowing the state can't be done in a purely pacifistic fashion.

I imagine there is a possibility that as problems in the US become more inhospitable the government will begin to impose immigration controls, foreign exchange controls, and possibly labor controls in order to protect their income base.

Eventually you'll have to pick up a gun no matter what system you're under.

States are already existing under a free for all world, this is what happens when you live under the pathology that the state some regulating finger of god, above and outside the nexus of complex human interactions. The state is made of individuals no more immortal or free of natural laws that govern your own behavior.

Or to put it more eloquently concepts such as 'state' and 'society' and 'government' have no existence save as physically exemplified in the acts of self-responsible individuals. He believes that it is impossible to shift blame, share blame, distribute blame . . . as blame, guilt, responsibility are matters taking place inside human beings singly and nowhere else

That tells me that this idea that shitty laws will be ironed out naturally maybe isn't so solid.

You're ignoring the theory behind this. Here's an example. Our local government put a stop sign in a very inappropriate area that caused significant traffic problems.

Because the government was small, the small issue is a big one RELATIVELY speaking, and so was more likely to be fixed; it meant more to the local government and the local populace. If the national government was put in charge of planting signs the small inconvenience is so irrelevant to them in the scope of things you would not expect them to care very much about creating a solution.

Does prosperity bring about a state or does a state bring about prosperity?

Productive capacity precedes the state's ability to siphon off said capacity. Unless you're arguing that, the US Federal State, in it's abstention from controlling human affairs, created the prosperity that it now has a large hand in controlling today. In which case we are in accord. Sweden is a pretty good example.

That's a pretty hard question to answer

In a certain extent it does, but there is still the collective capture the flag pathology that, whoever controls the state or federal government is justified in enforcing their values, rather than accepting secession. So people fight over control of government instead of separating. I DO believe that ideas and ideology can influence human behavior, the emergence of free trade in the 18th-19th century was due in large part to changes in ideology from merchantilism to free trade. My being on this forum and arguing for this sort of thing is not 'outside' of the incentives that eventually compel people to change.

More on the next post

I think there's a flaw in your idea somewhere and it may very well be that a free market society inevitably turns into a state anyway.

Like i said, ideology is important. Paying women less than men is systematically disincentivized, and today, adjusting for marriage and child birth, the wage gap is negligible. But if you live in a society where everyone believes in the pathology that women are inferior to men, and everyone, from statesmen to intellectuals to the mass man believes this pathology, problems will neither be solved instantaneously by act of congress [for obvious reasons] nor by 'the market'.

It's similar to religion. Believing in deities made sense and likely served a social function in the days of yore, and religion has evolved since then to a certain degree. However, simply because there is a very weak logical or empirical justification for various religious creeds does not mean everyone will become an Atheist in a relatively short period of time.

If the state were to disappear tomorrow, there would be chaos, but more importantly there would very likely be efforts, probably successful ones, to re-establish a new state [albiet smaller and weaker for practical reasons].

In order for a society to live without a state, there needs to be a strong enough ideology against notions of fiat land claims and monopolies of force, or at least an ideology that permits secession. Now I don't think that statist armies are more effective at defending against foreign threats, but i do think there is a possibility not having a state might provoke an attack from an outside state even if the outside state would have had a better chance of winning if it was fighting symmetrically with another state, and so this society would have to deal with foreign threats. However I don't imagine that it would be pratical or popular for the government of Britain, France, or even China to try and invade, say, 'Stateless Texas'.

You could argue that the fact that most people believe in statism forces everyone to accept statism, and only a handful of individuals will ever be anti-statists, and so the anti-statists shouldn't bother attempting to convince statists they are wrong. However this argument could be applied equally to religion. Arguing against the state is as slow and frustrating as arguing against god.

In terms of residence they will cluster in areas sharing their values, or as close to as realistically possible.

And then eventually a schism happens, a group breaks off and makes a new culture.
Hence: fragmentation.
Once a culture has broken off from the parent culture, they don't re-integrate it, it becomes a separate one.

I don't see what is wrong with this 'fragmentation' . We are not talking about separate societies closing off from one another. We are not talking about individuals not wanting to trade or communicate with one another. We are talking about individuals living under political units. When two distinctly different groups of individuals live under the same state, chaos ensues when they share in the ideology of 'whoever holds the flag gets to tell the other people what to do' separating these two groups is not the same as preventing them from trading with one another. The idea of having thousands of small states instead of a single large one seems scary to you but political schisms would probably have a net beneficial effect when we are talking about economic unity. Israelies and Palestinians might still hate one another if they each had their own state, but that hatred wouldn't likely prevent them from trading with one another once the POLITICAL conflict had been solved.

smaller states

You mean CITIES? I don't see any indication that mayors govern any better or smarter than governors or presidents.

Is that a complaint against the Theory i am putting forward, or is that some empirically grounded problem with what I've said?

Your argument is that as the range of governance becomes smaller, rules have to become better faster to keep up.
But where the hell do you see that happening? Cities are run just as badly as states or countries.

Again, what is your EMPIRICAL basis for this claim, or are you just putting forward an anecdote?

People don't leave their homes that easily and that's true both for arguments about shitty governments and arguments about shitty employment and services.

Obviously transaction costs mean nothing to you. APPARENTLY this isn't obvious, but there are several more employment opportunities within a 30 minute radius of your house [by car] than there are political monopolies of force. My mother, within the last 20 months, worked at five different jobs. She has found one that she has remained at and is satisfied with. On the other hand, in spring of 2011 My parents are planning on moving from NY to North Carolina because the economic climate of NY is inhospitable, specifically with regards to the extremely high costs of living imposed by the State of New York relative to other states. The process of moving from NY to NC is significantly more inconvenient than changing a job. Now it was decided that NC was a better place to live than NY and so my parents benefit from the move, but to the extent that it is difficult to make the move from one state to another is the extent to which NY can get away with being inhospitable economically.

At 8/19/10 01:19 PM, Memorize wrote:

At 8/19/10 12:03 AM, Warforger wrote:

No. However, your going to say that when the soldiers got home the economy wasn't booming? Also since when was Depression the same as a recession?

Oh, you mean them coming home after he died?\\

The war didn't end with FDR, you know.

It wouldn't have made much of a difference in the first place and I never said it was FDR's fault the economy boomed after WWII I just said it did.

At 8/19/10 01:19 PM, Memorize wrote:

I'd like to know your English or Ecomics teacher as well so I can punch her/him in the face for teaching you that a recession is the same as a depression.

I'd like to punch YOU in the face for failing to learn how to read.

Also, the recession of 1929 didn't become a "Depression until years later.

Yes, while some economists were saying don't panic, others were saying its going to be fatal this time.

At 8/19/10 01:19 PM, Memorize wrote: Did you know that FDR accused Hoover of being a socialist during their campaigns?

Republicans sure do that alot these days anyway

At 8/19/10 01:19 PM, Memorize wrote:

I must be missing something. Every graph I see shows that the 1929 crash was worse then the one in 1920, everything points to the 1929 crash being worse then the one in 1921 to the point that the one in 1921 just looks like it was a slight trip.

1st off: The worst of the Depression didn't even occur in 1929.

We were talking about the crash, I keep looking at graphs of the two Crashes and all show that the one in 1929 was worse.

At 8/19/10 01:19 PM, Memorize

Secondly... how can you call this a "recovery"?

The high point is 400 and by the time WWII starts, all he can do is get it back to 150 in 2 terms?

When WWII starts, not when it ended and the post war period.

The rich are not "opposed" to giving back to society, they are overtaxed. My father is an emergency room physician in Illinois and is up to 60% income tax (yes, I've seen it myself). We actually run a small farm because having a farm saves us a lot of money every year in taxes. Then you have to look at where it is going... unemployed/welfare leeches perfectly capable of doing work, illegal immigrants leeching off the system, government buyout of GM so they can send kickbacks to the democratic party and generate jobs in Mexico, etc...