The Left Isn't Going to Win This One
In this interview, the Warrior Poet Society guy (who none of you should know) and Dr. Gorka (another person you shouldn't know) talk about neo-marxists in the military. Dr. Gorka’s agenda is fairly transparent: keep the people focused on a nearly non-existent internal threat so we can redirect any doubts or critical thoughts about going to war to the trash bin. If this actually becomes an issue of contention, the left won’t win.
I’m not a soldier, and I’ve never seen combat, but I have been in a fight with an enemy that vastly outstripped my own meager martial arts skills and violence of action, and the difference between me and my opponent was equal to the difference between the left and right when it comes to the culture war.
And I got destroyed in that very brief fight.
Guy just smashed my lead leg over and over, and between each kick I just thought to myself that surely he wouldn’t smash my leg again.
But he did.
This is the state of the culture war, upon which the greater war partially rests, encapsulated by the somewhat sinister joke that is the aforementioned interview.
Getting into a war with Russia that could result in a massive number of deaths or total annihilation? Keep that open mind and talk about white rage and how it prompted the January 6th insurrection.
No socialized medicine for any of our citizens? Please complain about the audacity of people who make somewhat specious comparisons between black-on-black violence and police brutality.
Redirecting attention towards “neo-marxists” in the military, designating them as enemies for being too woke so as to direct attention away from potentially disastrous military decisions or to maintain cohesion?
How about totally disavowing neo-marxism (which is almost solely academic anyways)?
To repeat what I have said elsewhere: I get that white rage and privilege exist, and it is necessary to train our police better, but we have to fight the fascists and neo-liberals on the more important and winnable fronts - such as not getting into a massive war - and then the rest will follow.
We could, of course, be thorough by creating a well-rounded and defined political statement, flag shipped by competent, strong, and charismatic leaders that aren’t afraid to call out both fascism and neo-liberalism. But even then, we only have so much bandwidth, which should largely be dedicated to satisfying the most basic and important needs of the largest number. And if you have an issue with that you can advocate for stopping taxing the rich more than the impoverished.
Don’t mistake this post for bigotry, as I have nothing but empathy for the dejected underdog, the poorly understood minority - but I think we need to get behind a more effective battle plan against a foe unafraid to eye-gouge us to win. We have to divest ourselves of our basic human decency and desire to protect the oppressed among us to better serve ourselves (ourselves being anybody fighting this fight from the left, really). That’s just the way I see it.
I’m not a soldier, and I’ve never seen combat, but I have been in a fight with an enemy that vastly outstripped my own meager martial arts skills and violence of action, and the difference between me and my opponent was equal to the difference between the left and right when it comes to the culture war.
And I got destroyed in that very brief fight.
Guy just smashed my lead leg over and over, and between each kick I just thought to myself that surely he wouldn’t smash my leg again.
But he did.
This is the state of the culture war, upon which the greater war partially rests, encapsulated by the somewhat sinister joke that is the aforementioned interview.
Getting into a war with Russia that could result in a massive number of deaths or total annihilation? Keep that open mind and talk about white rage and how it prompted the January 6th insurrection.
No socialized medicine for any of our citizens? Please complain about the audacity of people who make somewhat specious comparisons between black-on-black violence and police brutality.
Redirecting attention towards “neo-marxists” in the military, designating them as enemies for being too woke so as to direct attention away from potentially disastrous military decisions or to maintain cohesion?
How about totally disavowing neo-marxism (which is almost solely academic anyways)?
To repeat what I have said elsewhere: I get that white rage and privilege exist, and it is necessary to train our police better, but we have to fight the fascists and neo-liberals on the more important and winnable fronts - such as not getting into a massive war - and then the rest will follow.
We could, of course, be thorough by creating a well-rounded and defined political statement, flag shipped by competent, strong, and charismatic leaders that aren’t afraid to call out both fascism and neo-liberalism. But even then, we only have so much bandwidth, which should largely be dedicated to satisfying the most basic and important needs of the largest number. And if you have an issue with that you can advocate for stopping taxing the rich more than the impoverished.
Don’t mistake this post for bigotry, as I have nothing but empathy for the dejected underdog, the poorly understood minority - but I think we need to get behind a more effective battle plan against a foe unafraid to eye-gouge us to win. We have to divest ourselves of our basic human decency and desire to protect the oppressed among us to better serve ourselves (ourselves being anybody fighting this fight from the left, really). That’s just the way I see it.
Comments (116)
According to wikipedia: "In April 2021, Gorka was permanently banned from YouTube for repeatedly violating the company's policy on spreading misinformation related to the 2020 presidential election.[53][54] Gorka's America First radio show had previously been banned from the site in 2019 for copyright violations, specifically due to Gorka's refusal to stop playing the Imagine Dragons song "Radioactive" in his intro segment."
So we have a topic from a man who barely worked in the White House for 9 months, then did nothing besides be a political commentator, who ultimately was banned from Youtube for lying.
I'm not sure anything this man has to say can be considered trust worthy or notable. If you believe that neo-Marxists are invading the millitary, can you find some better citations? For example, someone who did a study on the millitary, or internal millitary reports. Otherwise, this isn't really anything worthy of discussion.
You obviously have no reading comprehension skills or elected not to read what I wrote. Nowhere did I say there were neo-marxists in the military. I said why not totally disavow neo-marxism (something I think everyone on the left should do).
- You should be aware when people accuse the US military of marxism.
- You should be aware that Sebastian Gorka is one of looniest Trump advisors, a deputy-assistant to Trump, that there ever were. He served the Trump White House for six months (only because Stephen Bannon wanted him there). He is basically a Hungarian born television commentator who has had from the start of his career problems to get security clearance. This guy lives only in Trump world and is no kind of expert (other than that). But he pops up in the right-wing media to comment issues.
After taking that into consideration, that this is the crazy type Trump polemic that you can find there, the by all means listen what they say. Just remember the above.
Its ok, we all blow some steam sometime. Yes, I didn't see precisely where you were going. Try to give me a main idea, and focus on that. You wrote more like a steam of consciousness, which is normal for many people. Try to take a step back and tell me:
What is going on in the military that you find wrong? What is the evidence for this? Why do you think this attempt in the military will fail?
In general, and this is my personal preference, I try to avoid phrases like "the left" or "the right". They're generally nebulous and open to individual interpretation. Focus on ideas. People will make their own judgement if this is leaning a political way, but on the philosophy forums, our focus should be on the ideas themselves.
I think I wrote clearly enough, but I'll further explain. I am against the people using the term "neo-marxist" to tar other people in the military, and think that attempting to appease the kind of people that push for the more radical leftist social ideas, such as that the January 6th Insurrection was caused by white rage, give people like Gorka ammunition - because the right has an inherent advantage when it comes to the culture war. I think we need to fight them on their more brutal terms and that the social justices will come naturally with wins elsewhere. I hope that is clearer.
It's basically a very old political spin both parties actually use:
In the GOP view the basic issue is that: "Look what the Democrats are doing to the US armed forces!!! OMG!""
The democrat versions is to cry out: "Look at how right-wing the US armed forces are! OMG!"
And this happens, or has happened when:
- When blacks started to serve in all military units.
- Women were allowed to combat positions in the military.
- The military changed it's stance on sexual minorities. (Don't ask, don't tell)
- some in the military have been openly for Trump. (Then naturally it was the democrats who cried foul).
You might get the drift. Any political hot potato that the military has to reflect on and there is this rhetoric that commentators can go to.
(US Navy Seals being political in Kentucky in 2017. They were punished for showing political credentials. But I guess these aren't the neo-marxists that Gorka talks about.)
Basically it's a way to suck in the military to the cultural war discourse and to try to show that the other political party is politicizing the military and in the way making it less capable. That's where it basically comes to.
I actually agree with you. I must have really fucked up the delivery of my ideas.
You didn't get banned, so be happy! :grin:
This was one sentence that had a lot of ideas. Lets break this up a bit.
"I am against the people using the term "neo-marxist" to tar other people in the military".
Who are these people that are using such a term? What do they mean by that term?
"I am also against attempting to appease the kind of people that push for the more radical leftist social ideas. One of these ideas is that the January 6th Insurrection was caused by white rage. When people go along with these claims, they give ammunition to people like Gorka. I think we need to fight
them brutally (violence?) and that social wins will just come elsewhere."
Who are the kind of people that are appeasing? Are the people we appeasing those that accuse people in the military of being neo-Marxist? Why are some people appeasing them? Are all the people who are saying "white rage" was a factor of the January 6th insurrection all "leftists"? Because I believe its a discussion between many people, not just "leftists".
Do people like Gorka really need ammunition, or will they just be contrary and make up accusations for money regardless? Does the fact that someone will use your words against you, mean you should speak what you consider true or right? Just some questions to consider.
I didn't even say that, you didn't even quote me, you just made that up.
I didn't say anything even remotely like that, and I don't understand why I'm being misrepresented.
Same goes for you,
One hardly should think these show a real genuine culture change has happened in such large hierarchial organizations as the armed forces. Or in how university and academics work. Yes, those well reported excesses do show aspects of the present public discourse and views held especially in the media.
Quoting ToothyMaw
I'm not accusing you of anything.
So what was your real question?
What are you even trying to contribute other than the very trite kind of attitude so commonly fostered by these types of forums - which is to say condescending, pedantic, and unwilling to be even remotely gracious towards someone making a genuine attempt at starting a conversation. I put myself out there, you could at least try to understand what I wrote.
People aren't getting your point. So that I'm so stupid.
I'm just trying to piece together what you were trying to say. Relax. I'm not here to hurt you, honestly. If I was wrong, please correct me. Try taking one idea per sentence. When you blend a bunch together, its difficult for other people reading to understand what you're saying. Often when we write, its clear as day in our heads. But, when we type it out, sometimes it doesn't come out as we wanted. Its something we all learn from each other. Just try again.
He is talking about how the government tries to stir the public's attention to the domestic (internal) problems, while talking about going to war on the global scale. Internal affairs as diversion, so the government could focus on going to a massive war with another country. Or talking about domestic culture conflicts while dodging the scrutiny on the lack of socialized medicine. ETC.
So I'm not fucking crazy; my point is indeed obvious. Thanks.
Quoting ToothyMaw
No, it wasn't. L'elephant is a person who is within more of the far right culture, so he's probably heard something similar to what you were stating. For a person who is unfamiliar with that culture, it was hard to decipher. When we speak within a culture, we can say much while saying little. When outside of that culture, we have to say much to say little.
Quoting L'éléphant
Sometimes government do this, but I don't see any evidence of this within the last 15 years. Trump, Obama, and Biden despite what you personally think of them, were not war mongers.
Quoting L'éléphant
This is more accurate. I believe this is mostly because its what people care about more. When people vote, you need them impassioned and willing to come to the booth. Not enough people are excited over socialized medicine. Look at Bernie Sanders. He didn't quite win the Democratic nomination. Its not that government seems to actively be keeping it down, its that people are not actively interested enough, or demanding enough for it. If anything, I would say its the wealthy who would have to pay for it, who have spent a lot of time and effort convincing the culture that it would be wrong for them.
I am not inside far-right culture and never will be, but I suppose I can't expect everyone to be as familiar with this kind of stuff as I am; I watched John Lovell so the rest of us wouldn't have to - and I think the guy is either an idiot or a troll.
Quoting Philosophim
But they kind of were (and are).
I mean, Biden's administration wouldn't even condemn the killing of children in Palestine. And we gave weapons to Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen. And all three droned the shit out of civilians. At the very least the last three presidents were outright criminal when not given to incompetence - incompetence that might itself be considered criminal.
Btw, this whole "the military has gone woke" thing is not contained to YouTube. It seems to me that this could only get worse, but I will be pleasantly surprised if it doesn't catch on.
This study done by Pew, and this study done by Pew, demonstrate that single payer healthcare has significantly more bipartisan support than, say, the agenda of Black Lives Matter. Assuming that the relevant politicians elected actually represent their constituents with respect to these two issues, there is good reason to believe that bipartisan support for landmark legislation is still important for getting said legislation passed even with today's more cohesive parties. In fact, even if the left is mostly homogenous with respect to supporting something like BLM, they have more of an advantage with the socialized health issue, being as it would be a landmark law, which typically require more minority votes. If we wanted to pass a landmark law about, say, reigning in the militarization of police, that would be more difficult due to the necessity of bipartisan support.
Not to mention BLM's agenda is a little vague, so it's difficult to know what we're getting behind.
Quoting Philosophim
I think that that is wrong. People don't need to be wrapped up in critical race studies debates, for instance, to be incentivized to vote in their own self-interest.
Ok, I got it.
I would argue that this is how modern political parties who depend on the outrage factor to get people to vote for them operate. Now I don't want to be trite, but this is the way political parties do it: getting your supporters to be angry about the other political side is crucial, especially when you don't have much actually to give your voters. And yes, you can say it is a great way to distract public discourse from bigger issues. It's basically populism 1.0.
Remember Colin Caepernick?
He actually started his protest by sitting on the bench and it took two weeks for the media to notice this. Then a veteran Green Beret advised him to take a knee as obviously just sitting on a bench can be interpreted as rude ignorance or indifference, not as if you would be protesting something. But then Trump picked the issue in a very Trumpian way with demanding that the players who kneel during the national anthem should be fired and encouraged fans to walk out. And media limelight was focused on the issue creating a media frenzy. And Trump got what he wanted.
Perhaps political experts have a name for this, but basically it's about capturing the public discourse and to get your voters closer to you using values. It's designed so that the other side simply has to take the other side of the argument, like with freedom of speech in this case. George Bush senior did a similar operation with demanding that burning the US flag would be a criminal act.
And lastly, it's easy talk. It really doesn't have much to do with the budget or with government instititutions, it's this kind of talk that keeps people interested. It's the kind of meaningless value-talk that doesn't really change how the government and the political machine works. The military going all neo-marxist or woke will capture some interest as it is such a bizarre accusation. Or something similar.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Do notice that many Americans don't know how terribly expensive their health care system is (compared to any other system in the World) and assume that everything the government does, will end it up in an even more fucked up system. So better to have the present system, at least.
Socialism is a swearword, as you know. Single payer system is socialism, as the American view goes. So it has to be bad. Just like neo-marxism.
Thank you for sticking with it TootheyMaw, I think I understand your stance better now. I do agree in the context of a survey, people have bipartisan support for health care, but like SSU noted, in the context of political moments that drive people to vote, a Trumpian view captures the attention more than healthcare. Is this the way we should operate? Ideally, no. But is it the way a lot of us operate? I think so.
I really agree with SSU's last post, so nothing else to add here.
I consider myself a libertarian socialist, so I agree that "neo-marxist" or "socialist" shouldn't be treated like swearwords, but actual neo-Marxists are few and far between, and I don't think that they have any clout, so we should just disavow them imo; their ideas, and the ideas of many on the left in the upper academic echelons, have no chance at finding purchase with the average person and just weigh us down. They are dead weight.
Quoting Philosophim
Quoting ssu
So, what? We just play the game on their terms? That'll be a loss every time; the right is overwhelmingly willing to sacrifice just about anything to win. They see what works and exploit that until they win - with no thought to decency. That was Trump's strategy, and if Trump had been even remotely intelligent we would soon have seen someone taking a third term in the white house.
Avoid authoritarianism and make freedom a guiding issue. The American left was on the correct side of every issue wherever it chose to defend and advocate for freedom and against authoritarianism.
Ditch the European socialism for something more American, like Georgism. It was a big mistake to propagate the Euro-brand of socialism when there is a rich history of American leftism worth remembering.
Quit playing identity politics. It is just as superstitious and divisive as when the right uses it, and for the same reasons.
Avoid methodological collectivism because it leads right back into authoritarianism.
I guess I agree with some of that. But why not model our government after what we know works and results in the most happiness (social democracy)?
As an aside: it's starting to feel like everyone who is commenting feels the need to flex:
Quoting NOS4A2
I wasn’t intending to “flex”, just to offer my opinion.
The utilitarian concern is the problem to begin with because it sacrifices individual happiness for collective happiness. One exists, the other doesn’t. One can be attained, the other cannot.
But the happy collective is composed of happy individuals; if the collective is happy in general so are the individuals making it up. If you think that there is a literal manifestation of the collective that is an entity that is happy to the detriment of the individuals making it up...I don't know what to say.
If you mean most of the collective will be happy, you’re speaking of a majority, not the collective as a whole. So, again, you’ll need to sacrifice individual happiness to reach your goal, and crack a few eggs to make an omelette. To achieve this, your regime will be unjust.
From that I gather that you weren't originally talking about the general individual happiness, you were talking about sacrificing the happiness of a few in order to make the majority, not collective, happy. You should use those words, not "individual happiness" and "collective". You made it sound like you were making a more theoretical argument, not a practical, or even mathematical, one.
Yes, it can be wrong to sacrifice the happiness of an individual to make the collective happy, I agree, but I would also analyze it on a case-by-case basis. It might be unjust, it might not. If, for instance, the amount of suffering reduced by torturing somebody causes an amount of happiness that exceeds the suffering by a huge amount elsewhere...it still shouldn't be done. Everyone should have the right to not be tortured as a rule, else we live in constant fear of being sacrificed for the majority's happiness.
So yeah, I actually agree with you, N0S.
I think I misunderstood you, you are indeed making a theoretical argument, but I don't find it compelling because the terms you are using are too vague and could mean "the happiness of a few individuals" or "the happiness of the individual". Furthermore, I don't know what the "collective" is now.
I thought it was obvious I wasn’t speaking of some “general individual happiness”, which sounds to me incoherent. Sorry, I should have been more clear. By “individual happiness”, I mean the happiness as determined by each individual. A collective, to me, is simply the sum total of individuals.
So yes, the arrangement, if one is required, should allow individuals to pursuit their own happiness instead of providing happiness to whichever group of individuals hold a majority. But this is an individualist, laissez faire system, such as the one theorized by the founders, but betrayed by everyone henceforth. Could such a system find a home in the left-wing, as it had once done?
Most happiness with social democracy?
Actually, I think the best policies are those when the opposite side of the political aisle takes on the agenda of the other. Also this is the perfect way to go through with some smart policies: the majority of the supporters of a party are just happy that their party is in power and don't actually notice that the actual politicies are quite in line with what the opposition wanted. Take example of Republicans with George Dubya Bush with Medicare (or was it Medicaid) or the economic policies of the UK Labour party after Thatcher (Tony Blair and Gordon Brown).
This is the way things become to be "a norm". I think the UK Conservative Party has understood this and this is why they got in the last elections a lot of previously labor-voters to vote for them (and smartly Johnson understood this and was humble about it). The GOP on the other hand... Well, it's in crazy Trump-land.
Quoting NOS4A2
Wishful thinking from you, NOS.
Both sides just looove identity politics. Oh they won't let go of the issue they so dearly love. It's like Germans and Hitler (Germany allways has these Hitler-Welle things happening in their public debate). Remember, the objective is to keep the tribes separate, you know. Best thing is to have the voters be angry at each other, that they don't notice they have much common in their resentment about those who rule them. What better way to refer to the color of skin or whatever difference they come up with, you privileged white cis-gender male living in Canada (or something like that).
Ready-made identities suit us perfectly. We don’t need to consider a person on his own when we need only apply an identity and be done with it. Of course, this is to misidentify rather than identify, but who cares at this point?
I understand you now; I was searching for those words when I said "general" individual happiness. I admit I could have said it better.
Quoting NOS4A2
lmao, "if one is required". I think one is required, NOS. Even libertarians think we need a few arrangements, if only to protect our individual rights from being infringed upon.
Quoting NOS4A2
I think some sacrifices for the greater good are okay, such as taxes. We get a very large utility margin from taxing the super-rich, for instance, something that I believe is necessary because they won't willingly give enough on their own. They don't even suffer for it, really.
If you want to talk about a bad arrangement, how about being exploited by corporations, which are fundamentally amoral, for the maximum gain of a few who couldn't care less about your aspirations and desires. We have genuine wage-slaves that have no time to pursue anything other than their next paycheck, let alone meaningful happiness. That's a genuinely shitty arrangement, not the rich and super-rich being taxed.
And if you want to make it about rights: everyone should have a right to a decent minimum standard of living, full-stop. If people can't support themselves or their families or their spouses working multiple jobs, it's time to supplement their income.
I think we can find a happy middle-ground between understanding power dynamics and the fact that, ideally, everyone should be considered as an individual with their own merits, when all other things are adjusted for.
Yep. That's the name of the game.
You wouldn't people interact as citizens, would you?
Now that there is a collective identity some seem to hate.
Perhaps that’s where we differ. I don’t see how being payed a wage for one’s voluntary labor constitutes slavery while having a monopoly on violence appropriating one’s payments for labor constitutes a sacrifice for the greater good. Taxes are forced labor and slavery. To feel the force of this, try evade taxes on the one hand, and not showing up to work on the other. Only one may land you in prison, where slavery is still constitutionally protected.
Everyone does have the right to a decent standard of living, should they attain it. But if you believe everyone has a right to be provided with a minimum standard of living, why won’t you provide it to them?
I 100% would if I could. But I'm not super rich or a politician. But there are those who could that refuse to do so. So we tax them.
Look, NOS, this makes sense to just about everybody; I've met children that understand this. You take care of the people who can't take care of themselves because fundamentally human nature is a mixed bag.
We know that without regulations or laws power structures and disparities form that harm the average person. The rich don't usually care about those at the bottom or near the bottom, except to exploit them for labor, and they have a disproportionate amount of influence over the power structures in place. This is a well-documented trend. Ideally, we could just use democratic means to empower the average person, but the super-rich have already rigged it, and even have people like you, NOS, explaining away the suffering they are complicit to as a function of their rights.
I completely agree that we should care for those who cannot take care of themselves, so long as they want our help. But I believe stealing people’s money or demanding others care for those who cannot care for themselves does not amount to any kind of care I that I can believe in. In fact I believe that is the opposite of care.
The worry for me is, if you limit caring to paying taxes, why should anyone care for those who cannot take care of themselves if they’ve already done it? Why should I give a man a quarter if I’ve already given that quarter to the institutions I’ve delegated to care for others?
Make a new thread if you want to keep talking about this, please. It is far from the intended discussion topic.
Unless you can relate it to the growing noise about supposed wokeness in our military. I feel like these people are testing the waters to see if it will *float. Hopefully it won't.
What founders "theorized" about this? Certainly not Madison.
Worth remembering that the "founders" were also slave-owning, generally wealthy individuals -- many planters. The Constitution reflects their interests rather well.
Has nothing to do with libertarian revisionism.
Quoting NOS4A2
Indeed a "worry for you."
People care about one another. They want their government, the people they elect and the institution they pay taxes to, to give services they cannot individually provide. Just as sensible as infrastructure or a corporation. This is no way negates individuals caring. I don't look at someone on broken down on the road and say "Eh, I pay taxes -- let the government help."
I'm sure people do think this way. It's the same sociopaths who want to generalize their sociopathy to everyone -- attributing it all to "human nature."
Fair enough; my apologies. I’ll just say the American left used to uphold freedom as a guiding principle, and the void has been filled with statism, collectivism, and authoritarianism.
Then what do you do?
The problem here is, because taxation is forced. and the entity that governs that collection has the monopoly on violence, there isn't a single amount good done by taxation that isn't immediately negated by an equal harm, primarly in the form of individuals having less money to take care of themselves with, hundreds of thousands of bodies wasted in war, and an endless stream of government benefits that lead to greater government dependency, and thereby growth of the state beyond anything we've ever dreamed of. There's nothing about taxation that increases utility.
Quoting ToothyMaw
It is specifically the organization doing the taxaing that has created the possibility for corporations to even exist as they do in their current form. Again, when you give the monopoly on force the power to steal your money in the name of the greater good, which isn't a thing, they immediately put stolen funds to use protecting their interest and creating economic entities that are exstensively protected from competition that would have led to better quality jobs over time. Instead, you get a century of Walmart, and congress keeps deciding how to spend your money.
Quoting ToothyMaw
Absolutely not. There is nothing about your conditions, or anyone else's, that will ever create a warrant on me to provide you with any sustenance. The idea that you would turn first to random strangers who have nothing to do with your life, not to ask, but to demand provisions that require individual labor to accrue, before placing the responsibility on the people that created you (that's mom and dad), or extended relatives that have an immediate fixture in your purview , is beyond anything I can understand. The labor of other individuals is NEVER something that you get to regard as your right. A good way to remember this is to ask yourself if this is something I have to force somebody to do if I can't convince them of doing so of their own free volition. That's your first sign that you have exited the ethical domain.
You assume too much. My post was gathered 100% from ToothyMaw's OP. I was wondering why no one could get what he was saying.
This is the reason why I avoid political topics -- you get accused of carrying a baggage. Let me assure you that I don't even vote. I don't know what's going on in any government -- except the covid. I never got sick in the year 2019, 2020, and 2021. Maybe because I followed what the medical experts said?
I didn't miss a day of work during those times. Even going to the empty office building to finish some paperwork (this was the time when everyone was working from home). It was fucking scary because all the floors were empty, so motion lighting wasn't being activated. Have you ever stepped out of an elevator to an empty, dark floor? It was holy fuck paranormal-ridden adrenalin to walk around and there was not enough motion to trigger the lights. (Before covid, the building was very busy, elevators took forever to come to you). This is as close as I've gotten to a horror movie.
Sorry to go off on a tangent. Carry on.
I stop and help them. If that’s too hard for you, perhaps a lost child is an easier example. Maybe you struggle with leaving it to the government because you pay taxes— but I don’t.
I wonder what Donald Trump would do.
Awesome — so first and foremost let’s abolish private property, which is created and protected by state power. There’s nothing about your condition — or anyone else’s — that will ever create a warrant on me to provide you with these protections.
If having enough to eat and live isn’t a right, neither are property rights.
Sociopaths — I mean so called libertarians —usually miss this point, of course.
Government’s purpose: protect private property. Protect private property from foreign and domestic threat. Provide law courts to settle distributes for property owners. The Ayn Rand wet dream.
No, private property is almost exclusively protected by individual owners, via priavet security, electronic security systems, on hand weapons and defensive means, and regular monitoring of premises that either hold, or serve as property. Here's an article that can put that into perspective: https://www.securitymagazine.com/blogs/14-security-blog/post/96189-law-enforcement-versus-private-security-in-the-united-states#:~:text=According%20to%20U.S.%20labor%20statistics,compared%20to%20666%2C000%20police%20officers. The "private property requires a state," argument is little more than a Marxist misreading of history. In other words, I don't want those imaginary protections. The state has quite literally NEVER protected any peice of my property. States protect their own property, and violate the property rights of individual citizens through taxation, civil asset forfeiture, eminent domain, enclosure, and the authorization of corps that cannot be competed with, or out of business. Again, to abolish private property, you would have to monitor individual behavior and force people not to allocate property and means by which they can produce for their own benefit.
Quoting Xtrix
This is where you're having serious trouble. You have a right to live, you do not have a right to my labor so that you may live. It is not your right to dictate that my body to be used as your giver of sustenance, that's called slavery. And, you just contradicted yourself. If you have a right to eat, that means you have a right to property. You canot have your right to property recognized, without also recognizing my right to property, which ensures that you don't get to eat my food, which I accrued through my labor, without my permission. .
One is an idiot, if someone thinks the below argument will float:
But then again, the senile Fox viewers... :roll:
And then there is the reality:
Yes. A lot of tax payer money (and new debt) going to the military-industrial establishment. Nothing is more lucrative than government demands for acceleration of a weapons program. Or establish an entire new industry.
We were talking about the poor, just to be sure. But it appears you’re talking someone broken down on the side of the road. Would you extend the same kindness to the homeless in your community, as you would someone who cannot fix their car?
No, it would be entirely dependent on the nature of the cause of such pecuniary straits. And I would never help someone on the side of the road as if it were some duty, but only to be kind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iAHJCPoWCC8
It is not. The rights of private property are gifts from the state. Those rights are also protected by the state. If a bum is on your property, you can call the police. Most people wouldn’t open fire. If a group with greater numbers or greater weaponry wants your land — the state, with their law enforcement and military and technology, will protect you — because the law says you’re the owner.
You’re living in a fantasy.
Quoting Garrett Travers
It doesn’t require a state. I never once said that private property is exclusively a product of the state. But I’m not talking about Rome — I’m talking about the world we currently live.
Quoting Garrett Travers
But they would if you needed it. As would the courts.
The state has never protected my property from raccoons either— so what?
Quoting Garrett Travers
The right to eat and live is just as much a right as property rights — which also requires taxes to support. If we support one, we should support another.
I’d prefer my money go to a starving child, yes. That’s the greater good, in my view. The government, which I fund through taxes, should do this. Not in agreement? Fine — then give up property rights as well, which is also a state supported gift.
What’s slavery is being essentially forced to work for wages. It’s called wage slavery. I have a little say in government — I have zero say when it comes to the profits I generate for the owners I work for. Sociopaths usually have little to say about this dynamic, oddly. I guess it’s really “freedom.” Government is also the real problem, in this fantasy.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I don’t consider food or water “property”.
No one is asking anything from you. If you want to live in a cave, go do it. If you want to be part of society, and contribute to it through taxes — then those resources should go to more than protecting property rights. They should also go to helping children who are starving. Especially in a country of abundance. Most people don’t own property anyway.
Yes, and often do. But I’m one person. I know others who do far more than me — and shouldn’t have to, in a country of such enormous wealth and resources. Which is why we should call on our government — and our tax dollars — to help our fellow citizens. I think if we can spend trillions on defense contracts and bank bailouts, we can spread some around to the millions in poverty.
But maybe that’s because I’m not well versed in sociopathic philosophy.
More Ayn Rand bullshit, as always.
“I feed my kids because I want to — not because it’s the law!”
Yeah, no shit.
I don’t help people because it’s a “duty.” It’s because I’m not a sociopath who thinks everything can be reduced to “trade.”
This is objectively false and I have provided you a small article on it. Private property is not a gift from the state, it is a demand from the people that, although you can enlist the state to aid you in protecting, is predominantly ensured by private owners. Here is another report on the subject:https://www.ojp.gov/pdffiles1/nij/247182.pdf
Quoting Xtrix
You have the right to eat and live, you do not have the right to my labor to ensure that you do. And no, taxation is never required for any of this. In fact taxes most of the time ensure people have less money to eat on and fund wars that kill hundreds of thousands, I'll pass.
Quoting Xtrix
You can give your money to whomever. The government purports to fund this, while also sending billions to foreign countries and funding, again, murderous wars all over the world for decades. And no, my property rights don't vanish because the state stops stealing my money. Come to my home and attempt to steal my property, I'll show you how property rights are ensured.
Quoting Xtrix
You aren't forced by any other entity than the state which encloses the entirey of this section of the continent, thereby guaranteeing people of your philosophical leanings cannot erect commons on which you can escape the Free Market and private property. It is not employers forcing you into the market, it is the state.
Quoting Xtrix
No, I'll just do as I please irrespective of whether or not the state is stealing my labor through taxation. Again, private property is not by and large protected by the state, it is predominantly, and it isn't close, protected by individual property owners. As far as children are concerned, yes, if you are going to be stealing money, that is certainly a good place to send it. But, let's not be naive and pretend that is what the state is doing in any comparable way to its spending on military and other mindless fiscal irresponsibilities.
And yes, food is property. If I have possession of an item which I have authority to protect, that constitutes property. Doesn't matter if you view at as such.
It's like you've never heard of the strawman fallacy. Mind you, that shit doesn't work on me. Feeding one's children is their duty, they created that human against their will and humans are an altricial species, which we know before conceiving child. That isn't even remotely comparable to helping people on the side of the road, or the homeless. And I'll wager to say that you've not read even the first chapter of Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology, or you wouldn't have said something as radically anti-objectivist as that.
Quoting Xtrix
Only a sociopath would use objectively true statements as a means to describe someone as a sociopath, in the hopes of having an audience regard you as noble by lionizing the idea of aiding people indiscriminantly, irrespective of whether or not that person were a sociopath themselves. Which is exactly the kind of assessment that is entailed when I say " it will depend on the nature of the cause of such pecuniary straits." I don't have a duty to help anyone, and you are a slave driver if you intend on abusing me into agreeing with your zero-sum philosophy. What you are is a sociopath who thinks that you can help people by being their crutch and preying on their weaknesses for your own self-congratulation. I'd wager to say you haven't given anything like the help you purport to stand for.
There are no rights but legal rights, e.g. rights having the sanction of law, recognized as such, and which may be enforced through the mechanism of the law. It's sad but true, sorry. What we call "rights" if they're not legal rights are what we think should be legal rights, but are not; which we think should be honored, regardless of whether they are. But what we want, what we think we're entitled to, is simply that and no more, absent incorporation into the law--wanabee legal rights. Why speak of them at all, except in the context of seeking their inclusion in the law? As well declare yourself master of the universe (or sovereign citizen, for that matter).
Although you are correct, in the exact same way you'd be correct by saying numbers don't exist, this isn't the proper way of looking at rights. As both rights, as well as numbers are incredibly useful to human flourishing, essential even. Either rights are a commonly understood recognition of the sovereignty of individual boundaries, or, simply put, anything goes. In a world of no rights, one has no business ever arguing for or against any action undertake by a human, as they have no right to do so. That being said, irrespective of such a recognition, I will be ensuring those around me recognize MY sovereign boundaries, as I am not the property of other individuals and will assert my own sovereign boundaries, while respecting the boundaries of those before me. Furthermore, rights are a conceptual framework for which we as rational agents give reasons for upholding, derived by logical consistency, values, and rational justifications. In the world of ethics, rights do not require law for their justification (see appeal to law fallacy). If you have to force your views on people, that's your clue that you are violating everything apropos ethics.
That’s very admirable. Now you just need to organize with others who do the same and on a grander scale. Do the work instead of demanding it if others. Lead by example instead of force and coercion. Lead by reason instead of sociopathy.
I can give you the right to borrow my lawnmower whenever you require it. Rights are bestowed by men, and not all men are legislators.
Then maybe I'm an idiot. It sounds like exactly the kind of thing that will float to me, quite frankly.
Quoting NOS4A2
Sweet Jesus, wanting to tax people to provide for those who cannot provide for themselves is sociopathy?
Quoting NOS4A2
Yes, but we need an arrangement that will guarantee that the rights bestowed by citizens to other citizens and the private arrangements that they make are protected and honored, do we not? Don't we need some sort of basic legislation to do this?
Nah, it was just a joke. But it is immoral and unjust.
In my opinion yes. The so-called Night-Watchmen state suits me just fine. Beyond that it should not go.
So you really would think that the Biden administration would think that maternity flight suits are more important than the threat of Chinese hypersonic missiles are designed to destroy US aircraft carriers?
I think it quite possible to determine what we, and others, should or should not do without recourse to the concept of "rights." And I think one is able to do so without needing to assume the existence of some right-giving, non-human authority, which I consider a benefit. To assure that things are or are not done, however, is another thing. I can claim the right to do whatever I please, and likewise can claim that others may not do things in violation of my rights. That is what may create a situation where it's impossible to maintain that actions taken may not be taken.
Absent a common understanding, you would say. But what, and where, is that common understanding? Do you think what you conceive to be your rights are recognized by all, and would not be violated by them absent any penalty which you believe is appropriate (and which you may not be able to impose)?
The concept of rights is a useful one for purposes of limiting the power of governments and regulating conduct. But governmental power may be limited without the assertion of a right, by a prohibition for example.
I don't think you give me a right, though. You allow me to use it; my use is contingent on your consent. I have no right I can exercise regardless of what you want.
I actually promote this idea. I however, simply do not jettison the concept of rights, as it has a place on the ethical table, it's part of the of equation. It is the application of that very framework that has led to the flourishing of countless live and a framework that, if dispensed, will lead to pandemonium, even if you and I both know it isn't necessary to reach moral conclusions. You have to remember, most people don't think about the stuff we do here, the mundane folk need these kinds of frameworks to work with.
Quoting Ciceronianus
I agree, I think. Your right to do as you please invloves the conceptual understanding that you have sovereign boundaries that others do not have the right to violate, because if they do, then the concept of rights self-destructs and you have Cole Porter style anything goes.
Quoting Ciceronianus
No, I don't. Nor do I seek to solve this dilemma. That isn't the place for ethical philosophy. Ethical philosophy can only present the case, it can't get people to accept the case. But, I am equipped with epitemological knowledge to combat any argument that rights are useless, or that can be asserted that would skew the framework to include violations of individual sovereignty, which covers the concept of rights in its entirety.
Quoting Ciceronianus
Couldn't agree more. I would simply caution throwing out that framework prematurely, dig?
Ever read Tom Wolfe's article Radical Chic: That Party at Lenny's? It's about a party Leonard Bernstein held for the Black Panthers in 1970. Bernstein would respond "I dig absolutely" to statements made by the Panthers. I'm showing my age by referring to it, and no doubt by thinking of it in response to your question.
Not that you're a Black Panther. In any case, I do dig. Absolutely.
No worries, my friend. I'm picking up what you're putting down. However, I actually haven't read it. But, I will.
-G
It surely is a right. My behavior is such that I allow you to use it, yes, just as my behavior is to allow you to speak when I give you the right to speak freely.
Private property is a gift from the state. I don’t care how many private security guards one has. For the millions who can’t afford bodyguards and private security, this is irrelevant. It’s also irrelevant to the law and to rights. Private property rights don’t come from the tooth fairy— they come from the state. No matter how many security guards you can afford. (Legal rights. Whatever else we mean, whether God-given or whatever, I’m not interested in.)
Quoting Garrett Travers
It’s a right. But the right to healthcare and something to eat? Guess it’s not “demanded” enough.
It wasn’t demanded by the people. It was enshrined in law — in the US’s case, in the constitution. By landholding slaveowners.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Property rights are enforced by the state, which is funded by taxes. Providing for the poor can be done by the state, funded by taxes. When you say “my labor,” if not your taxes I don’t know what you’re fantasizing about. Go clutch your gun if you need to— but no one is coming for “your labor.” No one cares. What I’m talking about is TAXES and how government spends those taxes. If they can spend trillions on defending your private property, they can spend some on starving children.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Purports to, and fails to.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Oh how impressive. How heroic.
Sounds like every other wannabe tough guy who clutches their guns like little squirrels clutch their nuts. Conservative paranoia.
Your property “rights” do indeed vanish without government. Call it whatever you want at that point, but it’s not legal. At that point anything goes. Defend it if you can. Based on what you say, my guess is you’d last about five minutes.
Quoting Garrett Travers
The state is currently an instrument for the employers. They own the state because the people who run the state are beholden to them. Lobbyists write laws, not the people.
True, we can blame everything on governments— but for anyone not caught in the fantasy, this is a convenient cover for the ruling class. “Government is the problem.” And people like you parrot it forever. The one guiding principle. Predictable and, for those willing to give the matter more than 5 minutes attention, completely wrong.
But you demonstrate nicely how effective that propaganda is.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Most property doesn’t need “defending.” No one cares— your paranoia aside.
Property is a right granted and enforced by states. The fact that some people (mostly businesses) hire security guards (many of whom are ex cops) on their own is completely irrelevant. Besides, our military, which protects the entire country (and all property within it), is not a private entity— in fact, we all spent 700 billion dollars on it this year alone.
But I’m glad you’re able to play make believe with your guns. Keep protecting that private property from those ‘injuns and robbers.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Predictable. :lol: Called that one.
Ayn Rand’s political philosophy is a joke. Logically coherent, no doubt — but a complete fantasy. And one used to do untold harm.
And yes, I’ve unfortunately read a number of her works, fiction and otherwise.
Quoting Garrett Travers
:rofl:
It’s objectively true that everything can be reduced to trade. Imagine that.
Goes to show objectivism isn’t a philosophy, it’s a sickness.
And push government to do more, which is its proper function.
I recommend you organize with others and build your own roads, in the meantime.
:100:
Quoting Garrett Travers
You’re not promoting anything except plagiarizing Ayn Rand books.
Right, only man in his government form can flatten ground and lay asphalt.
Sure, set a bunch of bureaucrats to do the jobs you refuse to. That’ll work.
Those people objectively accrue and protect their own property. Your incessant appeals to law make no difference to the processes which do not require any laws associated with them. You've been overhauled on this point with multiple points of data, you're simply not correct.
Quoting Xtrix
Healthcare and something to eat are property, they must be traded for because you do not have the right to the labor of others to provide property for you. This has been explained to you now three times.
Quoting Xtrix
Property rights are enforced predominatly by private owners, I have already shown you that. You're a Marxist parrot with nothing to add to this conversation. Taxes is theft of labor, of which the government steals from both you and I, unless you're a welfare leech, at least 25% of what we earn. They spend more money on laws that place nonviolent offenders in prison for multiple decades. The idea that you can defend this murderous entity and still claim you care about children being fed is narcissism beyond that of which words can contain.
Quoting Xtrix
I don't care if it's enshrined in law, it is protected exponentially more often by private owners. Period. Move on.
Quoting Xtrix
Is this suppose to be an argument, or are just you venting your frustration that a 90 pound Russian lady single-handly destroyed your political framework
like it was afternoon tea-time?
Quoting Xtrix
Well, no. Take you for instance, you have nothing to offer anyone, no value to trade, you can't even be trusted to contribute actual arguments in a debate. The idea of trade doesn't apply to people like you.
:cool:
You're projecting. You've done nothing short of angrily parrot assertions that were easily refutable that you probably picked up from Richard Wolff or some other dumbass just like him. Come back to the thread when you have arguments that can withstand scutiny.
I don't think I understand you. Are you saying I don't have the right to speak freely unless you give it to me?
If there are no rights, then you have no business telling us what your opinion is on ethical topic, you've no right to share. Where as there are no rights, nothing should bother you about anyone's given circumstances, they have no righ to ask, or to seek, or to demand anything other than what the world has offered him. If he has no rights, as you vociferate in your usual sociopathic manner, he shouldn't be upset when men like you clobber him over the head for what goods you can have him for, he's no right to expect otherwise.
That’s right. If no people give and recognize your right to speak, then you have no right to speak freely. It sounds easy to understand to me.
Go back to sleep NOS. Or go read more Ayn Rand.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I’m sorry you don’t understand what property rights are, nor apparently what the law is.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, maybe if you repeat Ayn Rand another few times it’ll become true.
You do not have the right to the labor of others to provide you with property rights either. Nor the military to protect you. So like I said, go live in a cave if you don’t want to be part of the civilized world.
Imagine believing that feeding children and providing healthcare for people should be a “trade.”
Objectivism really is a sickness.
Quoting Garrett Travers
They are not. You’ve shown nothing of the kind — you’ve given a blog about the number of private security. So for the fifth time: that’s not the point.
Property “rights” are legal rights. They may also very well be from God or nature or objective reality or whatever bullshit you want to claim they are. That’s irrelevant. Without a legal claim to land, it’s not your land. Cicero explained this to you. But keep trying — you’ll get it eventually.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes— anti-politics is the one principle you subscribe to. We get it. The government is the problem. Yawn.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Which is, again, irrelevant. “I don’t care if property rights are enshrined in law.” Excellent argument.
I “protect” my grill and shoes more often than the state. Ditto my street. Cops and FBI rarely come around. What does this have to do with property rights? Ah yes: nothing.
Quoting Garrett Travers
:lol:
Gotta love the objectivist cult. Nothing if not predictable.
Quoting Garrett Travers
:yawn:
Yes, sorry I can’t live up to the standard of “I don’t care.”
Yet here I am sharing it.
So much for that theory.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Well done, Donald Trump. Take a claim that accurately describes your philosophy, then regurgitate it and hope it catches on. So very clever.
You’re a follower of a sociopathic cult. You fool no one.
Wonder how the tribes of Papua New Guinea function without this idea. Or literally everyone prior to the 17th century.
I do, the concept doesn't require the law to enforce it.
Quoting Xtrix
That's not an argument. Possessions and services paid for are property. Anything that belongs to someone is property: a thing or things belonging to someone. That's the definition.
Quoting Xtrix
The state isn't required for property rights to be enforced, as the report and the article I gave you demonstrate, and the state makes me pay for military by violating my right to my own labor. Not sure what you think you're arguing.
Quoting Xtrix
Literally no one ever said that. Except you, who has now said it at least twice without having been prompted to. Feeding children and providing healthcare is not any duty of mine, simple as that. Nobody is stopping you from feeding all the children, Nancy.
Quoting Xtrix
It has everything to do with property rights, cupcake. You keep saying the state protects property. So, doesn't matter. What matters is, property does not require the state's protection and isn't protected by law enforecement more than property owners as it currently stands. And yes, I've given you an article and a govenment report on the subject. You can keep ignoring them, but don't expect anyone here to take you seriously.
Quoting Xtrix
She literally lives in your head.
You're certainly sharing a wonderful display of neuroticism and self-contradiction. You are here sharing, sweetheart, because you have the right. You see, we actually live somewhere, and operate within domains that recognize individual rights. When you occupy space in an area populated by people who don't, and you being someone who says they don't regard rights as " a thing," you will have no business being upset with what anyone does to you, as you have no rights otherwise. And If you don't regard rights as a thing, then why do you keep bringing up children being fed and people having healthcare as if such things were a right? I'll wager to say that you believe in rights only when it's useful to your idea of whatever it is you've drummed up in your hateful little head.
Quoting Xtrix
Oh, I see what's going on, you're a crazed liberal with Rand and Trump constantly on your mind. This is a really embarrassing display on your part. You could have just come here and had a discussion.
Take some drugs and think about it, Mike.
Yep and after that...go back to killing and torturing each other in the most horrific of ways!
I hate to break this to you but did you know enough American-on-American or any x on x violence exists to make any form of social group (BLM, LGBQT, or Women's lib) nothing more than a bad joke!
It does. Without military, you have no state. Without state, you have no property rights to protect and “enforce” through your security guards.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes— how very Ayn Rand of you. That devil altruism, the real destroyer of worlds.
I’ll go with sharper thinkers, who actually understood the importance of the commons. Like Aristotle. You stick with Rand.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Totally irrelevant, but also happens to be untrue. Why? Because for the fourth time: states grant the legal right of private property — a state is protected by the military. Regardless of whether BlackRock hires private security guards.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yes, because *I’m* the one not taken seriously. :lol:
Well done, Mr Trump. “No, YOU’RE the puppet.”
Oh okay. So anything we do, we do because we have the right to. Got it. So if I slept with you wife, I did so because I have the right to. No wait, I don’t have the right to do that. So if I don’t, it’s because I have the right not to. If I speak, it’s because it’s my right. Don’t speak, because it’s my right to remain silent.
Laugh at your ridiculous Nickelodeon views on rights? Also my right. Which I am now exercising.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Nah, I’ll say and feel what I want. Whether I’ve heard of “rights” or not. Wikipedia the history of rights — fairly interesting. Not as simple as whatever some Russian lady says they are, but still worthwhile.
Quoting NOS4A2
:kiss:
Secirty guards aren't law, and neither is the protection that I offer my property, which has been sufficient for 30 years.
Quoting Xtrix
None of the above statement changes the fact that I am not responsible for the children other people created and abused, or their healthcare. I'll leave that up to people like you to put your money where your mouth is. Which won't happen.
Quoting Xtrix
That's never been in dispute, dumplin-tits. What's been in dispute is the necessity of the state to do so.
Quoting Xtrix
That is correct, you lack the requisite intelligence to be taken seriously. You've served only the purpose of my amusement thus far.
Quoting Xtrix
This above statement is the most brilliant thing you've said in this entire discussion. Yes, when you negate the concept of rights, this statement listed above, in all its in coherence, is the natural conclusion: a jumbled mix of self-contradictory nonsense. I'm glad you're catching on.
Quoting Xtrix
Rights do not require that you hear of them, nor understand anything of their history, but only that your sovereignty as an individual is recognized. Which you are doing for me, and I am doing for you. Even if I have to lead you by the nose to get you anywhere.
:nerd:
No one has claimed security guards are “law.” Quite the opposite in fact. The law is what grants property rights— in the real world. True, they could be handed down from Zeus— but that’s irrelevant.
Quoting Garrett Travers
But our government could be — and should be. I’m happy to see my tax money go there. You aren’t. Fair enough. You and Scrooge would get along very well.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No, that hasn’t once been in dispute — except while talking to yourself. You brought that irrelevant point up, not me.
“Property rights are granted by states through laws.”
“Yes, but most protect their own property.”
Still wrong, incidentally — but even if true, totally irrelevant.
Sorry that you’re struggling.
No, the law recognizes that my property rights are not to be violated, as there are no rights without property rights. It doesn't grant me them, it recognizes them. The founders of this country made that explicitly clear.
Quoting Xtrix
This is the correct mode of being. You may have your feelings about government, that's fine by me. What is not fine by me is you, or anyone else, choosing for me. When you give that authority to the state, it uses such authority to double the harm for every good it does. You know this just as I do. You see the innocent people locked behind cages for decades, the endless bodies both in our streets and abroad, the exorbitant sums of cash fueling wars you and I didn't vote for. It's plain to see for all who have eyes to look.
Quoting Xtrix
Except they aren't. They're recognized by law, there's a difference, and they are ensured predominantly by private owners. It is not a concept that requires law. These are issues you actually need to work out in your head because it skews your perception of the role of individuals in society if you don't. For example, you kept saying property rights are tantamount to healthcare, this isn't the case. One is the recognition of free individual action, and the other is the appropriation of action and labor as a means of provision. These are totally different and contradictory concepts.
How about this, you stop insulting me, and I'll quit insulting you, and let's have this discussion and see if we can't work something out? Believe it or not, I actually have a vested interest in seeing where opposing sides can become compatible. You already know where I'm coming from: I follow the precepts of Stoicism, Objectivism, Utilitarianism, and Virtue Ethics; and I generally get where you're coming from, a general left leaning perspective on social issues and what appears to be basically Deontological Ethics.
What do you say?
As if property rights are handed down by God. Irrelevant. What is relevant is that they're legal rights granted and enforced by states -- i.e., a gift from states.
Bertrand Badie; Dirk Berg-Schlosser; Leonardo Morlino (2011). International Encyclopedia of Political Science.
There are plenty of "rights" without property rights. There's no private property in China, for example, yet they go on just fine anyway.
I suppose if we define property as literally anything, then you can get your answer in one step. But I was assuming we're talking about the real world. In the real world, we can talk about legality. What's much harder to discuss is rights as "natural" or "God-given" or something of that sort.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Like I said at the beginning -- if states (governments) can grant property rights (and patent rights, and corporate personhood, etc), which allows for the massive wealth inequality and hoarding of resources that we see, they can also grant the right to the basic human needs of its citizens. Which, it turns out, is good for everyone. To deny the latter and keep the former is pure hypocrisy.
Quoting Garrett Travers
No, because I don't accept the doctrine that "government is the problem." There's plenty to criticize about governments, no doubt. But there's no reason to believe they're inherently evil -- if they work for the people, they can work for the greater good and, in fact, often do. The United States government "of the people" should be responsive to those people -- and it usually isn't. That's a problem. Why isn't it? Because they (the people making up the government) have been bought. It really is that simple. Plenty of good scholarship on this. I think we all agree.
The belief that government is the problem, and the libertarian claims about "freedom" ("free enterprise," "free markets," "free trade," etc.; in its highest and most clever form embodied by Milton Friedman), ends up serving the special interests of corporate America. This is the problem in my view. While we're busy blaming everything on big government, as we have for at least 40 years, nearly everything -- except corporate power -- has gotten worse. Look at any economic metric. Stocks are way up, no doubt -- but that proves the point when you look at who the major shareholders are.
So if we want to be serious about the problems we face, we can't say "business is the problem" any more than saying "government is the problem." It's just not that simple.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Quoting Garrett Travers
OK, let me parse this a little. There are two things we're talking about here:
(1) Property rights -- or any rights -- as natural, inalienable, God-given, etc. The argument being that they exist one way or another, objectively and factually, regardless of the existence of a nation-state or laws.
(2) Property rights -- or any rights -- as legal entities.
I'm talking about (2). We could argue about (1), but I'm willing to grant it. In which case, whether states "recognize" or "grant" rights is irrelevant. What's relevant is that they create the legal right. Perhaps the Native Americans had "rights" to the land they inhabited for centuries -- I would argue there's something to that. Did they have legal rights? Unfortunately no. That doesn't mean they didn't fight for their lands -- of course they did.
So the point, again, is simple: since private property is a legal right, and this legal right (which can be upheld in court and protected by the state if needs be) is granted by the law, and the law is created and enforced by a government (in our case, the constitution and the military/law enforcement respectively), then why not also "recognize" or grant legal rights of "life" (i.e., sufficient conditions for living)? The preamble to the constitution mentions the "general welfare." I think we should take both very seriously -- not simply one over the other.
We can claim that government's recognition of property rights is more basic than the others. I don't agree with that. And, since we're all citizens of this country, and pay into the government, all of us are supporting the government -- the government which also grants legal property rights. So I'm helping to protect the property rights of Berkshire Hathaway, the patent rights of Pfizer, the landholdings of BlackRock, the legal personhood of corporations, the grotesque military budget, etc. Why is that perfectly fine, but giving checks to those in poverty isn't?
I guess it's just a matter of what we believe the function of government should be. I think it should serve the people's interests and promote the common good.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Fair enough. It's less time consuming to be a punk, but I'll try.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Like I said before, there's no logically inconsistent about objectivism, in my view. I was into Ayn Rand for a while myself -- and still respect a lot of what she says. But I think her views on capitalism are in part a reaction to her experiences of the Soviet Union, and what was taken as socialism/communism. So she pushed the other way, in favor of laissez-faire -- but that's an ideal, one that has never really been tried, one that may not even be possible, and one where even if implemented could arguably lead to destruction. I don't share the value that competition in the free market leads to all kinds of great things.
And for full disclosure: I think we need to move towards anarchism (in the traditional sense), i.e., democracy all around (including the workplace) and then, in the long run, perhaps a system along the lines Plato discussed in the Republic, or Nietzsche hints about.
That's as ridiculous as saying, "the government respects your right to life, as if your life was handed down by God." No, property rights are the natural conclusion to logically assessing the nature of the huamn being and what he/she requires to sustain his/her own life. Meaning, liberty from coercion to pursue possessions that allow his/her life to continue in accordance with his/her natural, biological needs. No god required.
Quoting Xtrix
Actually there are property rights for those who administer the state in China, and they, like good little Aristocrats, delegate to whom to give rights of property and to what degree. To the degree they sustain themselves, is to the exact degree they subsist as a people outside of abject misery by delegating rights of property. And no, they do not go on just fine. They've been the conductors of multiple genocides and millions of people live in squaler and heartache. This is something you really need to re-assess, and I mean that as friend.
Quoting Xtrix
Property is anything one has possession of that did not involve the violation of individual boundaries on the part of another to obtain. I don't discuss rights as that, I discuss rights as an amalgam of two things: one being, the logical assessment of individual right to action and the boundaries thereof, and two the societal relationship between peoples that is responsible for creating a political domain of freedom. In other words, both the ethical question, as well as the legal.
Quoting Xtrix
Okay, now were getting somehwere. Alright, so you grant one, that rights are inalienable.
Quoting Xtrix
They do create a legal right, that's of course true. The question to ask about Native Americans is: did they recognize the rights of eachother to inhabit such lands? If the answer is, yes, then yes. If the answer is, no, as they were constantly warring with eachother for land, then the answer is clearly that imperialism takes the day. I'm of a mind that rights apply to all those and only those who are not violating them, be it Native Americans, or the authors of the Monroe Doctrine. I hope that really does clear that specific element up. To reiterate, you maintain your rights when not violating the rights of others.
Quoting Xtrix
Well, hear hear, brother. You and I agree on some stuff. Of course her reaction was to her abusers, but that doesn't make it any less coherent, as you conceded. It is not and never has been the purpose of Laissez-Faire to lead to anything other than the freedom of individuals to produce as they see fit, granted they respect the rights of others. That is the only point to Capitalism. Not that it is going to produce all these great things, which, it simply happens to. Unfortunately, the only types of markets and economies to ever exist are dirigistic ones, meaning controlled and influenced by states, or political actors seeking protection from competition and rights violations. So, I'm with you there.
Quoting Xtrix
I happen to be an anarchist, myself. As far as I am concerened, states, all of them, have lost there right to exist long ago. Just about after the second or so genocide. One thing I can say about markets, they have never produced such carnage or tragedy outside of state influence. Ever. Never in history. In an anarchic society, you could have your co-ops and democratic methods, and erect commons, which will be essential to the success of your experiment. All of this, while peacefully co-existing with those who opt-out of said structure in favor of markets and private property. The ONLY way to achieve this, and why left and right is actually compatible, though they don't often notice, is through the implementation of Free Markets - totally - and voluntary commons within which private property is not permitted as a principle of said commmons. I'll ask you, do you see how we're far more compatible than dissimilar? I'd like you to.
Hehaha!
Yes, plus endless wars, overwhelming inequality, global hegemony keeping many nations oppressed, etc.
And China's pretty bad too.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Well there's a lot to say about that, but yes for the sake of argument, let's grant that's true.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Yeah but this ignores that we live in a community. To speak of individual rights is fine, but we also have an impact on others around us -- every choice we make. In some ways, even the guy who goes to live in a cave is having an impact on others.
The basic concepts here are individualism, ownership, rights, and the priority of rights. I've come to see that the greater good, our fellow human beings -- both here and around the world -- is much more important. Not because I'm altruistic, but because it also affects me. A good example is the pandemic. What is it our business to worry about whether other countries get vaccines? I think it's obvious why.
But even within this country, I think the fear of fascism and authoritarianism, which is no doubt a rational fear, has led to the development of these ideas you subscribe to -- those articulated by Rand, Friedman, Hayek and others -- and the implementation of which has led to some terrible results. Now that could be as unfair as saying Stalinism represents "communism" or Marxian thought -- which I think is true. Regardless, look at the outcomes. Something clearly isn't working in this neoliberal era.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Well if they've never been tried, it's hard to make that claim. Perhaps they would, by some invisible hand, etc., but that's purely theoretical.
But like I mentioned, it's arguable whether free markets can even conceivably exist. I don't think they can -- but that's neither here nor there. The fact is that they haven't yet been tried, and that the world's economies are mostly mixed economies.
I also reject the values. So even if we grant free markets can exist and, if they did, would naturally lead to desirable societal outcomes, I would still object to he system. I object to slavery for this reason as well, regardless of whether all parties involved are happy.
Quoting Garrett Travers
So perhaps anarcho-capitalist or something like that. Fine -- we agree about the state. In the meantime, while we live with the state (at least a centrally controlled state), we can ask what its function should be. Namely, I don't agree with ...
I think we can and should ask more of our collective efforts than this.
But even if Rand (or, better and more serious in my view, Friedman) is correct -- it's all theoretical. That may very well be the goal -- just as communists have a goal -- but the fact is that it hasn't been tried (or if it has, no one will admit it)...what we have are policies that lean more right or left. And for the last 40 years, and currently, we're living in a neoliberal era -- an era of the "Washington consensus." That's moving away from the New Deal, Keynesian policy (the era of Bretten Woods, Glass Steagall, etc.) and towards the right. How has it turned out compared to that era? If you look at it, it doesn't look good. And I think the ideas of Friedman and others are used to rationalize nothing more than conservative, corporate power.
I think what's required is abolishing capitalism altogether. It's done enormous harm as a socioeconomic system.
Quoting Garrett Travers
They've only existed with state influence. So yes, if we blame slavery, the crash of '29 and the depression, the crash of 1907, the crash of 1987, the crash of 2008, etc., the monopolies we see today and throughout history, the stagnant wages, the outsourcing of jobs, the shuttering of factories, the financialization of the economy, the massive CEO compensations and stock buybacks, etc., to the state -- then that's simply selection bias. Anything that happens that's negative...that's because of the state. Anything positive is because of the free market and capitalism.
But at best that's an incomplete analysis. The state isn't the one deciding what to do with the gargantuan profits of corporate America. Sure, they bail them out and subsidize them, but they don't mandate net earnings allocation. That's handled by the owners of the companies. When all one cares about is profit, we see over and over again how externalities are ignored.
Lastly, even if we attribute all negatives to state action preventing the free market from working its theoretical wonders, the question is: who runs the state? Are the people advocating for bailouts, tax breaks, subsidies, and favorable legislation? Hardly. The people are not being listened to, except at the periphery. As I said before, it's not the people that write the laws -- it's the thousands of lobbyists representing corporate America.
Corporate America -- and every good capitalist -- knows very well that they need the state. They need the laws, the protection, the infrastructure, the subsidized labor, the handling of externalities, the bailouts and the favorable monetary policy of the Fed. They also know that when things go wrong, the people get angry, and revolution is always a possibility. They're not stupid. So who's to blame for the widespread discontent? Easy answer: the government! The president. The congress. Corrupt politicians. And we see that. It's Trump, or Ted Cruz, or Obama, or Biden, or whoever. I rarely hear the average American talk about Jamie Dimon or Larry Fink, or the Business Roundtable, or ALEC, or the WEF, etc. There's stirrings of it a little more these days, after Occupy and the Tea Party, but that's a fraction. Both the mainstream left and right put all of their attention on the government. I think it's all a mistake if we ignore the major powers that control the government.
Quoting Garrett Travers
We all have commonalities. I think we want similar outcomes, but I'm not sure we both see eye to eye on what the problems are and what the causes of these problems are. So solutions will also be skewed because of this, despite both wanting freedom, justice, etc.
China is much, much worse. But, I don't stand to defend states and never will.
Quoting Xtrix
No, it is specifically this concession that allows for the existence of community. If you respect the sovereign boundaries of your fellow human, community emerges as a by-product, and so does respect and empathy for one's circumstances. Sovereignty is the cover charge to peaceful society.
Quoting Xtrix
You can ask more, but what you should never regard as your right is to compel me via threat of violence to help you in supplying whatever provisions you need for your project. Our government was created with the expressed intention to be a nation of laws whose primary purpose is to protect rights. Providing for the general welfare does not mean forced federal taxation to pay for any social cause statists can get their hands on, and was supposed to be limited by state's rights to decide such action based on the democratic process, and what budgets would allow for. I for one agree with the above statement. That is the only legitimate government. Charity is for charity.
Quoting Xtrix
It's not like I wish it to be that way, my friend. It simply is that way. Capitalism is nothing more than a domain that recognizes the right of every individual to accrue, exchange, and produce private property. It is inherently anti-state. Systems that show any disregard to this model, predicated on anything other than protecting the citizens from harm, are in direct violation of Capitalism. I just described every single state that has ever existed. It is the state that sanctioned slavery, it is the state that caused the depression, it was states the ground 100mill humans into nothingness in the last century, and so on... That was not the recognition of every human to own and trade and produce private property. It was the exact opposite. Even simple taxation is the violation of Capitalism, as my private funds that are my property are stolen from me without recourse, involuntarily, and with no hope of negotiation. I could go all day on this topic.
Quoting Xtrix
Need for a state? I fear you may be right. Ayn Rand certainly thought so, and she really put some thought into shit. The Fed can go strait to hell, it's an abomination that has cause immeasurable harm. Discontent? The internet. This always happens in history when a mass communicative paradigme shift occurs. You might think of the printing press of 1400's and the Reformation that ensued thereafter. People's worldview are being torn asunder, and it's leaving them in maddness. It will pass. However, a clear view into what politicians are upto will CERTAINLY be a factor in exacerbating that paradigm shift. As far as ignoring them, you'd do well to never, ever ignore the people with their hand on the political gun. They've meant business every time they've had their hand on it. You watch those fuckers like hawks, it could very well be your ass if you don't, that goes for everybody. In other words, I'm with you there, brother.
The way I look at it, the value of the sovereignty and protection of freedom of the individual must grasped from a ‘selfish’ perspective. That is , we give such such protections to others because that’s the only way to assure them for ourselves. But I think this applies as well to the political atmosphere of our urban communities, in which support for government taxation and participation in aspects of life from environmental protectionand climate change mitigation to gun control to protection of alternate genders is done out of such ‘selfish’ motives. Why the willingness of over-educated urban and academic ( and increasingly , high tech corporate) America to sacrifice individual sovereignty when traditional small town America finds such public interference to be an intolerable breach of rights?
I think this gets back to what freedom and sovereignty are for. Yes , they are to protect and encourage individual pursuit of pleasure, hedonism, satisfaction.
I prefer to talk about these in terms of individual innovation and creativity. My theory is that 21at century academic and educated urban cultures are organizing themselves i. increasing complex ways. They are globally networked and interactive such as to promote continual innovation. I think the willingness for sacrifice of individual sovereignty is for the sake of a richer potential for individual expression of creativity. This would seem to be self-contradictory, but I think this rests on the idea that even as we have individuals desires and points of view, we have the capacity to influence each other in positive ways , ways which can be studied and organized into policy for social engineering. The left encourages publically structures social experimentation and manipulation. because they see person as a nodes in a giant feedback loop that has the potential to enrich all participants, not just as participants in a larger whole. but as individuals who can paradoxically express their individuality more and more fully through such means. Notice how social expression is hawked by advertisers to urban hipsters who support BLM , language policing and Critical Race theory.
I think the idea of social engineering is so profoundly threatening to traditional Americans because they simply don’t belief that human beings are able to understand each other well enough for such engineering to be anything but a disaster, or simply because they are for indicating freedom. Public projects whose inequivocal value is obvious to them they do support ( like the trans-continental railroad or the interstate highway system)
This objection comes up over and over again in conservative think tank writings I’ve followed over the years. They simply believe that it is hubris to think humans can mess around with God-given or natural human nature and make any sense of it, much less
turn it into social engineering policies. so best to leave it to its own devices , the invisible hand.
The accusation of selfishness leveled against the right from liberals I think misreads this skepticism and caution as a lack of caring.
Primarily from fear. When people don't have answers to complex questions, they first run to mommy and daddy for aid. And as far as taxation is concerned, there isn't a single thing you named that I would voluntarily pay for. I would have to be forced to, which I am.
Quoting Joshs
And I, as a sovereign thinker, am 100% on board with all of you getting together to do that. If you have to steal my property, or force me to participate to see it happen, then you are violators of freedom and will create 2 parts harm for every good you do. Just as our current government does.
Quoting Joshs
Yes, they want your individuality to be subsumed by the greater individuality, and the want most to be at the head of that hierarchy. In other words, they want your identity and they also want their own, they just know how to make you feel guilty about it.
Nicely put and I suspect this is correct. Misreading skepticism and caution as a lack of caring is a new one for me which I will mull over.
That would be great if you did. The idea that I am not caring if I discriminate in my considerations on whether I will provide aid to someone is bizarre. It's what everyone does in any given situation. You don't just open your home to beggers and orphans. And even if you were the type, you can't house them all, thus some form of discriminatory practice is put in place.
It seemed like you were saying that the idea of skepticism and caution being misread as not caring was something that you were just now reflecting on. Did you mean something else? Because that's what I remarked upon.
I don't consider this relevant to my take on Josh's point. But you and I are too far apart on these matters, let's not even start. :wink:
No prob, homie. I don't have conversations with people they don't want to have. Even If I'd love to know where I disconnected.
:cool:
On what metric? Let's be concrete. I agree -- I wouldn't want to live there -- but a lot has been overblown, while ignoring the good (it's often said that "capitalism has risen more people out of poverty than any system", for example, when it's overwhelmingly China that's responsible for this -- is that "capitalism"?).
Quoting Garrett Travers
Recognizing others as human beings is a good thing. I'm not disputing that. I'm talking about externalities. Individuality fine; trade is fine. I wouldn't exclusively raise both to the level that Rand does, but no doubt they're important and have been part of human existence for a long time indeed.
What I'm talking about is externalities. I may do something that's good for me, or for my company -- or may make a trade that's beneficial to me and another person. What doesn't get considered in all this are the effects to third parties. Pollution is a good example, as is climate change. Right now we're heading to disaster with the warming planet. Why? Because fossil fuel companies, using the same tactics as the tobacco companies, have successfully delayed any transition away from their products -- all for short term profits. Can we fault them when they're doing what companies (supposedly) are required to do?
That's capitalism. It's based in private ownership and private profit. The less its regulated -- i.e., moving more towards "freedom" of the market -- the worse things get for the rest of the country, as we see in the neoliberal era. Global warming is one example -- but there are countless others. Quite apart from politics, something is going awry. It's just that people blame it on different things. One side says it's the government, the deep state, the bureaucracy, or the liberals; the other side says it's the Republican party, the 1%, etc.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Nor does it mean taxation to pay for what Rand considers proper functions of government -- protecting private property, law enforcement, courts, etc. I didn't agree to that. You have no right taking my money to pay for those things either. Can't have it both ways. As long as their is taxation, however, and billions are spent on military funding and corporate America, I think we can take a page from other countries and provide national healthcare as well, etc. Given especially that we're the wealthiest country on earth (or maybe that's China now -- but we're close).
You want to make it sound like private property costs me nothing because the state doesn't protect it, private owners do. But in the case of land -- leaving personal property aside -- the state is constantly reinforcing contracts. If you own the land, the state allows you to protect it and not get put in prison, for example. And, of course, they provide military to protect the entire country, and all the property within it.
Private property, again, isn't free. Rand recognizes this too, she just thinks it's a proper role of government. The founders had every reason to believe this to. Fine. It's in the constitution. But so is the promotion of the general welfare -- which they also recognized is very important.
We have millions of Americans in poverty, with stagnating wages and massive debt, rampant drug abuse, etc. To argue it's unfair for our money to be "stolen" and go to charitable causes -- because that's coercion -- and not also note that it's equally unjust for our money to go to protecting private property and military expenditures, is just hypocrisy. If this is what your philosophy leads you to, you should recognize something has gone wrong along the way. Like a math problem, it's worth going back and checking your work. Everything may have looked fine, but clearly the results are wrong.
Quoting Garrett Travers
But it really isn't. If this is truly what you believe, then you're on par with a Christian who claims everything good is a result of Christianity. "It simply is that way." While we can easily see that Christianity has also done untold harm, he or she cannot.
Being a believer in free markets and a version of capitalism that precludes any possibility of failure is an unfalsifiable dogma.
I would ask for examples, but I can anticipate what they'd be. The example of China is a good one. A communist country. Yet they've pulled millions out of poverty. Why? Capitalism. So China is a good country? No, they're very bad. Why? Communism.
It's just not serious.
The fact is that there are no free markets, and never have been. It's a nice theory that one day, if ever we achieve truly free markets, we'll have wonderful results -- but it hasn't happened yet. Under that rationalization, in fact, we've done far worse -- that's the last 40 years. Compared to the prior 30 years, under a more center program (Keynesian policies) -- there's no contest.
Saying capitalism is a "domain that recognizes" is incoherent to me. You're defining it out of any relevance. Capitalism is a socioeconomic system, one based on private ownership and unique in its relationship between employers and employees. Like feudalism before it, we have a different organization of power.
To argue that the state causes slavery, the depression, etc. -- Here again, because there's never been free markets, it's easy to make the claim. Mostly untrue, but there's some truth to it (the Fed's monetary policy after the crash was a factor, etc).
But what about corporate allocation of profits? How is the state responsible for those decisions? They're not. This is one area which I mentioned specifically for the very reason that the state plays no role. It's up to the board of directors of these institutions. So why all the stock buybacks? If we say it's because the government, the SEC under Reagan and guided by Friedman ideas, changed the rules -- then yes, you're mostly right. So I guess in that case we should re-implement the regulations that were in place prior to 1982? Or is that anti-free market?
Can't have it both ways.
Quoting Garrett Travers
I think the discontent goes far beyond the Internet. The Internet -- particularly social media -- has exaggerated it, but the feelings have been brewing for years. Which isn't a surprise when you look at the numbers. Look at real wages, at debt, at the cost of education and home ownership, at healthcare outcomes, at the enormous transfer of money from the bottom 90% to the top 10% over 40 years (something like 50 trillion dollars, according to the RAND corporation), etc. Yeah, it's no wonder people are pissed -- left, right, and center.
Well, there are birth restrictions, and active on-going genocide, forced poverty, ideological suppression, just to name a couple things that should serve the purpose. And no, only people who are repeating what they've heard say that. the proper way of saying that is: to the degree that China has exapanded rights of property and the freedom of markets to operate naturally, is the exact degree to which people in China have been lifted out of poverty. It isn't Capitalism, much closer to Fascism, or Socialism (as administered by the state).
Quoting Xtrix
There isn't single Capitalist that I know of, that assesses these issues rationally, that doesn't have a problem with the above highlighted conscerns. However, I will remind you that the tactics that are put in place that allow such companies to not only grow to that size, but to comport themselves in the manner in question are generated by the state, and the state funds them and protects them in doing so. Free Market businesses and corps with those kinds of standards would be phased out in almost no time at all as a result of competition. As it currently stands, Corps are the protected class and the State is the ruling class that protects and authorizes them.
Quoting Xtrix
Well, no, it isn't, because they are funded via taxation of state created fiat currency controlled and manipulated by both the Fed and Congress. Not to mention the protections and contracts and anti-trust and patent laws. Far from Capitalism, my friend. Dirigisme, that's what you're identifying. And the only time in 20 years we've moved away from heavy, deep regulation was under Trump, and it wasn't near enought to stop the Fascism slowly approaching. I don't say it's the liberals, or the Republicans, I say it is the statists who keep expanding the role of government, keep artificially inflating the dollar, keep sending our stolen money to fund oversees wars, keep funding prisons housing innocent people, and so on. Anyone who says other wise is motivated by ideological possession almost guaranteed. Maybe not all, but almost all.
Quoting Xtrix
Rand doesn't advocate involuntary taxation, neither do I. I don't believe any organization has the right to steal your labor, that's a shake down, mob style. We advocate a system of voluntary government funding, so that the people eternally hold a fiscal veto over the actions of the government and its duplicitous controllers. Sure, we can provide healthcare, for a time. But, wealth is created, value is created, not printed. Venezuela knows what I'm saying. They also thought they could provide for their people, with all that juicy money coming from the oil fields. What happens when people stop buying, when America goes oil independent? Then everything falls apart and everyone loses their minds. Just as it happened in the Weimar Republic. Just as it happened in Russia under the Reds. Just as it is going to in China. I'd rather build a system without that almost guaranteed potential. And when it comes to taking a page out of the book of other countries, those countries are literally scaffolded and maintained by the health of our markets, our industries, our trade deals, and our innovations. If we fall, the world falls along with it, and so will their benefits; and the calapse will look at the Great Depression and say "hey, hold my Corona, you ain't see nothin yet."
Quoting Xtrix
No, my friend, these are Socialist lies. The Feudal system was NOT an ecomic relationship between people, it was a power hierarchy predicated on brute force and the Divine Right of Kings to rule. So was Absolute Monarchy and so was Mercantilism - all of which being derivations of one another adapted through hundreds of years. Capitalism is NOT a power dynamic, but many hierarchies, predicated on the exchange of value via the ability of he who participates. One is political and forced, the other non-political and voluntary. It is also hierarchies that are scalable, not based on genetics, and subject to positive change as a result of buyer discretion. The closest examples that we have of Feudalism in the modern world are North Korea and Saudi Arabia, to name a couple. Those are NOT free market societies. Capitalism is the unseen, unattempted societal model that will rise out of thousands of years of Statist societies of all kinds, be they City States, Empires, Feudal States, Absolute Monarchies, or Socialist States. We are in late stage Dirigisme. And we're so close, man. Here is the definition of Capitalism: an economic and political system in which a country's trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state. That should shed some light. The politics mentioned are the politics of non-interference and the respect for the sovereign boundaries of the indivdual, which is to say him and his private property.
Quoting Xtrix
I implore you to research how modern corps are erected and what the state does to ensure longevity out of them. Such practices include: funding from the treasury, contracts, tax-breaks, regulatory protections, patent protections, and anti-trust laws that totally bust the idea of even attempting to compete with them in any realistic way. I implore you to do this, my friend. YES, it is the state that is allowing for this, and seeing to its continued existence. As far as stock buy-backs, that isn't an issue. Stock buy-backs do nothing to the bottom line that workers recieve, or anything like that. It's just a topic people bring up to cast shareholders in a negative light. These people simply play the game that the state has engineered for them to play. This goes all the way back to the early 1800's that Mark Twain called the gilded age, he called it that because, although big businesses were creating jobs and increasing standards of living, they were literally in mutual co-operation with politicians that would fundamentally create the ground work for the modern corp.
Quoting Xtrix
Perhaps. On this particular subject I confess it's just an intellectual hunch that I've picked up from reading. Everytime in history there is a mass expansion of communication and information exchange, the world unravels. You might recall the printing-press and the reformation that followed, of which the Earth still holds echo. But, I'd say it's less wages and more the falling buying power of the dollar. This particular source was eye-popping for me, you should explore it when you have the chance, if you haven't already: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/ We know when all of this really got kicked into high-gear.
These aren't metrics. True, there are birth restrictions and suppression of information. I assume by genocide you're referring to the Uyghurs. The US knows all about crimes against humanity, of course -- especially to Muslims. As far as forced poverty goes -- not sure what you're referring to, considering they've lifted 700+ million people out of poverty (per the World Bank) and Xi's government has spent billions attempting to pull even more out of poverty -- and apparently has succeeded.
Again, plenty of terrible things to say about China. Plenty of terrible things to say about the US as well. Who's "far worse"? I'd prefer to live in the United States, myself -- but just because I'm a citizen and feel that way doesn't prove or disprove anything. In many respects, China has been a huge success and is currently outpacing the United States in many metrics.
Quoting Garrett Travers
The level of state intervention in the Chinese economy is overwhelming. There are no free markets. China has opened trade with the world, which was a smart move -- but they're still an authoritarian regime. And a very successful one, unfortunately. The world is a complex place -- even good things came out of Nazism, for example. Yes, we can pretend that nothing good came out of it, but that's emotion speaking.
True, we can attribute their success to capitalism somehow, or to the small degree that they were capitalist, or to "free markets," or the approaching of free markets, or whatever else we want to claim -- but I anticipated that already. That's simply motivated reasoning. There's no evidence for it, and nothing that can be used to disprove it. So it's a religious belief, an economic dogma. The faith in efficient markets really does parallel Christian faith in this regard.
It's like arguing "China has lifted 700 million out of poverty, therefore their market must be 40% free." It's just lunacy. We have to do better than this. Not liking China is no excuse for irrationality any more than arguing the Volkswagen didn't come out of the Nazi regime, but out of the degree to which they were _____. (Christian, capitalist, altruists, whatever.)
Quoting Garrett Travers
I'm not sure about the first part. They may be decent people otherwise, but I don't think you can be rational about any of this if you're a "believer" in capitalism. It's simply the nature of the game: you make profits for your company, preferably each week but definitely each quarter, or you're out. You're out as CEO, you're out as board chairman, you're acquired by other companies, you're attacked by hedge funds, etc. Remember the Friedman Doctrine: the sole responsibility of a corporation is to make a profit. We see the results. To the point where even in the face of an environmental disaster, the fossil fuel industry is still fighting to keep the industry alive -- for obvious reasons.
As to the second part, what you're stating is the efficient market hypothesis. With a free market, and free competition, everything will sort itself out naturally. There's zero evidence for this, historical or otherwise. It's at best simply hypothetical -- at worst a complete fantasy which enormous harm has been done in the name of.
Corporate America is the ruling class -- that's how wealth organizes itself, in the multinational corporation. It's here that the real power lies -- because they essentially own the state. We can say they're "protected," yes -- but they're protected for a reason. They weren't always as protected as they are today. But take a look at the cost of political campaigns -- especially since Citizens United. It's skyrocketed. Pretty obvious what the results will be.
Now true, we can blame the government. But to me that's kind of like blaming the puppet. The real power in America comes from concentrations of wealth. The rest -- politicians included -- become their employees. That's capitalism for you.
Quoting Garrett Travers
What does the "they" refer to? Who's funded by taxation?
I can't really make heads or tails of this statement. It's true we have fiat currency and that the Fed controls monetary policy (the money supply, interest rates, etc)...but I'm not sure what this has to do with what I wrote above.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Not sure why anti-trust laws are in there, but yes -- the state allows capitalism to go on. We're a mixed economy, as are almost all nations on earth. It provides the foundation of capitalism -- in private ownership. I don't see how that's "far from capitalism." Rand herself argues for protections of contracts as a function of government.
You're just kind of losing me here, I guess. I've provided a definition of capitalism I think is reasonable. It's based in private ownership, private profit, and unique in its employer (owner) / employee (worker) relationship. That's what separates it from other systems in history -- because we've had all kinds of systems, just as we've had all kinds of governments.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Neoliberalism is hardly dirigisme. The New Deal era perhaps (I wouldn't agree, but that's when you had much more regulation, more unions, more robust welfare programs, etc) -- but certainly not the last 40 years. And it was the last 40 years I was identifying.
Coming back again and again to blaming the state is exactly what I'm trying to show you doesn't work. The analysis simply breaks down. If the argument that less regulation, more privatization, less taxes, smaller government, etc. -- the neoliberal program -- is a good one (based on Rand and Friedman's principles), as it provides for freer markets (not totally free, but more free than the decades prior), then we should be seeing proportional results -- the kind you mentioned earlier when trying to account for China's success with poverty.
The results of the last 40 years has been a disaster. I could go through the specifics if you like, but if you compare the era from the 40s-70s to the 80s-today, the results may surprise you. One era you had what Friedman and Rand railed against (the New Deal policies), the other you had policies they advocated for. You say the latter is dirigisme makes me wonder: what ISN'T dirigisme? Has it ever existed? Has it even come close to existing? When? Where?
Quoting Garrett Travers
Trump was continuing what had been going on for decades, beginning with Reagan -- who did far more damage than Trump, in many ways.
Quoting Garrett Travers
You mean when the US imposes severe sanctions? Yes, it's pretty obvious to anyone what would happen.
Quoting Garrett Travers
It has nothing to do with socialism. It's also not a "lie," it's a definition. I'm not claiming it's "the" definition -- capitalism, like socialism, is a complex word. Many interpretations, no doubt. I'm offering one, and not an uncommon one -- actually pretty standard -- and willing to explain it further. So I'm not sure where this comment is coming from, or why what I said is so threatening as to make it.
Quoting Garrett Travers
A power hierarchy doesn't involve relationships between people? The very heart of feudalism was the relationship between a lord and a vassal. The divine right of kings is somewhat related. As for brute force, I'm not sure what you're referring to. Force was a factor there as well, but not central.
Maybe an outside source can help a little:
(Wikipedia)
The land was called a fief, which is where feudalism gets its name. Manorialism plays a big role, and so on.
It was one system. Slavery is another system. There are all kinds of socioeconomic/political systems. My point in bringing it up was to contrast it to capitalism, which is a different socioeconomic system. It grew up out of the middle ages and took off in the industrial revolution.
I don't think any of this is controversial.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Feudalism had many hierarchies as well. Hierarchies are structures of power, and involve power dynamics -- almost by definition.
There are all kinds of gradations of rank in every society. Capitalism is no different in this respect. But instead of a king at the top -- as with monarchy -- or with masters and lords as in slavery or feudalism, respectively, we have a different hierarchy. Who's at the top? Well, to make it concrete, let's look at a corporation. Who's at the top of a corporation? Yes, the CEO -- but also the chairman of the board of directors. The board of directors are voted in by the shareholders (one share, one vote -- so especially the major shareholders). These are the owners (technically, not legally the owners, but de facto owners).
So one could argue it's the shareholders, the board of directors, and perhaps the CEO and a handful of other executives. That's really not many people -- maybe 50? In a corporation that employs hundreds, thousands, even millions of people -- that's the top of the pyramid.
What are "employers"? Just another word for owners, really. Who owns the corporation? The public? No -- they're owned by private individuals.
So there you go. That, in my view, is the heart of capitalism. It's a system based in private ownership. The corporation is the example I use because it's the primary form of organization today. They're owned and controlled privately -- not through the government. The state can regulate and legislate, no doubt -- but for the last 40 years it's been the opposite: de-regulation, tax cuts, etc. Not to mention subsidies and bailouts. The state works for the corporate sector -- for the owners of this country.
Look at the word "capitalist," which pre-dates the word capitalism, and it begins to become clear. A capitalist is an owner of capital. Again, it's about ownership -- but private ownership. Marx says the private ownership of the "means of protection," a particular kind of property, but I like to just say private property generally.
Quoting Garrett Travers
True -- Saudi Arabia is a mixed economy. Sweden is a mixed economy. Germany is a mixed economy. Brazil is a mixed economy.
There are no free markets. If free markets is how you're defining capitalism, then it doesn't exist any more than a communist utopia exists.
So saying something isn't a free market society is pointless. The United States isn't a free market society either.
Quoting Garrett Travers
Well, fine -- that's kind of what I was saying earlier -- with the important qualification that, again, there is state intervention on nearly every level in the United States, China, German, Japan, India, etc. That is, there are no free markets and the owners of capital don't have complete control over trade and industry -- the state plays a huge role. So if capitalism is a system in which trade and industry are controlled by private owners, then capitalism exists exactly nowhere.
But yes, private ownership, private property, private profit -- those are essential features of capitalism. The relationship between owners and their wage-workers, their employees, is a unique one in history. The owner is not a lord, is not a king, is not a clergy -- his power comes from his ownership of property, of capital. He owns the land, the factories, the equipment, the means of production, etc., and gives some of his/her money (not protection from harm, not from the devil) to the worker in exchange for their labor. This is the game, the rules of the game.
That game -- that system -- is capitalism.
Quoting Garrett Travers
This is just factually wrong. It has in fact impacted the bottom line of workers. It's partly why wages have stagnated. There's a lot of good, non-partisan scholarship on this, in fact. Happy to give references. The numbers are astounding -- trillions of dollars in buybacks in the last couple decades. Companies often issue debt to finance buybacks -- and so the debt picture is looking very bad indeed. It's been sustained temporarily by QE, but it's not pretty.
Why do they do this? Why buy back stocks? What good does it do? Ask yourself.
Quoting Garrett Travers
There's no doubt technology is playing a huge role. My only point was that this discontent pre-dates a lot of the more recent, and more troubling, technology (iPhones, social media, etc.).
Be a bit more specific about metrics and I'll try to assess what you're talking about. As far as pverty, yes they've done much better of the course of the past decade. Which again hearkens back to what I said about introducing market principles and expanded property rights. The reduction in poverty is commensurate with the departure from Moaist policies and an introduction to a more Capitalist approach at economics. Here's a good article on that written by economists from the World Bank: https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-development/2021/09/24/whats-next-for-poverty-reduction-policies-in-china/
Quoting Xtrix
Let's hope it stays that way. I don't think the Uyghurs would share your optimism. Or, the Falun Gong.
Quoting Xtrix
I know, that's specifically what I was referring to when I said it is far worse than America. I didn't sta there were free markets, I said to the degree China expanded property and free market principles. Not that they are Free Market, Free Markets don't exist.
Quoting Xtrix
Defer to the article above, it describes how China has been slowly transitioning from Communist economic policies to more Capitalist ones. That isn't to say it is completely Capitalist. Again, Capitalism requires Free Markets, or it isn't Capitalism, but Dirigisme.
Quoting Xtrix
It's exactly the opposite. The government controls, manipulates, prints, and lends all of the money. The government has more money at its disposal than any corporation that it allows to exists. If it is wealth that is the source of power, which it isn't, it's wealth + monopoly on violence, then it follows that the government is actually the puppet master(s) and the Corps do their bidding. Which is why Corps are always lobbying, they can't do what the state doesn't allow them to do. That's Dirigisme for you.
Quoting Xtrix
Corporations. The modern Corporation is funded by the government, which indebts us to its spending, thereby rendering us tax slaves to the Government and by extension the Corps it funds and protects.
Quoting Xtrix
So, again, you should visit that link I sent you wtfhappened in1971. Wages and earnings have been stagnating since 1971 with the advent of fiat. A procession that began with 19th Amendment in 1912, along with the establishment of the Fed and the massive expansion of government role in the econmy from Wilson and F.D.R, that has simply not stopped since then. The reason we haven't seen that commensurate increase is because markets have grown less and less free by the decade since the depression. The post-war boom was an artifical spending spree that mirrored that of the 20's almost to a T. HAs nothing to do with Free Market expansion. And no, as I said, Free Market Capitalism is the final thrust out of 10,000 years of government controls both politically, and economically. It has always been Dirigisme.
Quoting Xtrix
Trumps started what hadn't been addressed in couple decades.
Quoting Xtrix
No, that's not what I meant, and sanctions were not in any way what unravelled Venezuela. Venzuela banked all of their social spending on the oil fields and went bankrupt because nobody wanted their oil after a while, so began barrowing form China and others. This is wha precipitated their decline, not sanctions. That simply didn't help. And if the argument is that te sanctions imposed upon Venezuela harmed them because they were unable to perform a greater amount of market activity, you'd just be demonstrating the need for Free Markets. which is my point to begin with.
Quoting Xtrix
No, a power hierarchy is not an ECONOMIC relationship. It is a relationship predicated upon the application of force as authorized by God. The collecting of taxes and rents on this basis is only possible with the extended use of force to suppress populations and relegate them to respective classes as determined by the Aristocracy. Force was the CENTRAL role, that's not even a question. You have to apply force to people to keep them in their place, other wise they'll just do something else, and you have to tax them to coerce their labor to fund your war and architectural campaigns. That is exactly what was central to Feudalism. Not the ownership property. Any society where there are slaves and serfs bound to landlords as a caste, is a society where private property rights are not respected, but delegated top down.
Quoting Xtrix
I think you need to read your own source a bit more closely. The "structuring" part is what you need to mince. The people doing the structuring, instead of allowing people to structure their own lives, is the key for you to understand this topic. It's top down, seen to by force and coercive taxation, relegating humans to immobile castes. This is Dirigisme, again. Not Capitalism.
Quoting Xtrix
Feudalism has ONLY power hierarchies predicated upon lineage or clergy, and they determine the nature of your entire life. An economic hierarchy, as I said, is predicated on ability and is scalable. One s forced, the other voluntray. You need to connect these distinctions, or you're never going to understand this.
Quoting Xtrix
Yes, that's correct. That would be the heart of Capitalism if government didn't control, manipulate, artificial inflate, and arbitraily print fiat currency and didn't authorize, regulate, tax, contract, and protect Corporations for it's own gains. That's Dirigisme. You're like, right there, man. You're right at the cusp of seeing who's really in charge here and who's causing all the issues.
Quoting Xtrix
I agree, the difference is, it hasn't even been attempted. That's the issue. Where as communist states have been tried on every continent.
Quoting Xtrix
Bingo. Meaning all of this vitriol associated with Capitalism is by definition a distraction from the heart of the actual issue at hand: Government domination of markets as means to fulfill their desires within the context of competing power hierarchies around the globe, all conducting themselves in exactly the same manner. The Feudal lords, my friend, have snuck up on us once more, only this time they've successfully convinced people that their fellow man is a terrorist and that the guy who discovers a cure for diabetes is a monster for giving it away for free: "That's Capitalism, for you." Utter, fucking, bullshit.
Quoting Xtrix
Shoot me some, I'll have a look.
Quoting Xtrix
Yeah, it's damn near a certainty.
Damn, that was a long forum.... These are gonna get longer. Wanna move this chat to private? No pressure.
Of course not, but I think some people, including active service members, might think that those things are indeed indicative of pervasive wokeness in the military that needs to be fought and eliminated. And I think people like Milley give those people ammunition by saying that "white rage" caused the January 6th insurrection, for example - which I think was just a bunch of idiotic Trump supporters being idiots; as far as I can tell it wasn't racially motivated.
Agreed. That's fine with me. It'll take me a little bit to respond in any detail, but after reading your response I think the basic issue has become clearer, and one I touched on earlier: the source of the problems. Again and again you come back to governments. What I'm arguing is that we have to look at who controls the government. When you look at that, I think it's pretty clear who does. But it's not the people. Tom Ferguson has done interesting work on this, in terms of what policies are enacted.
So if the government is the problem, and the government is actually controlled by capitalists....then I think it's clear as to where we should look.
(Actually I agree with the latter)
Yet what can one say? Only that there are these juicy narratives that people want to use and fit everything into. If the narrative is that "The Democrats are making the military woke...and thus the combat capability of the military is in danger", then you will try to find every small detail that you can use for that narrative, be it maternity flight suits or whatever.
Of course the "normal" answer would be that the military is part of the society and hence everything that happens in the society in general will typically show also in the military. When there was segregation in the US, then the US military was segregated. When it stopped, so did it in the military too. The armed forces aren't so detached from the overall society as some people assume. And likely there is a law or regulation that demands pregnant workforce has the right to have fitting clothes in their work.
Yes, I know that any small detail can be considered confirmation of some backwards-ass belief, but my point that actually playing into the wokeness narrative is detrimental remains true. Milley shouldn't be talking about "critical race theory", which he might not even know is a legal theory that started in the seventies that is highly academic and also criticized by legal scholars, but rather about inclusiveness and diversity as a tangible strength, and that, as you point out, the military will inevitably reflect society at large. Milley and others who are confronted with accusations of promoting critical race theory in the military should just not accept those terms, mostly because they almost certainly aren't even teaching our soldiers actual critical race theory.
In fact, it almost seems fallacious to me to suggest that we (the reasonable people) shouldn't play smarter just because some people will twist details to suit their narrative.
So when you had a President that at least thought seriously about using the armed forces to alter elections, you know how perilous the situation is for such a well respected institution like the US armed forces. That's where Milley had to walk the real tight-rope between the commander-in-chief and the constitution.
As I've said earlier, the FBI and it's director were the first to be used political pawn used by both sides (without skipping a beat) to their partisan polemics. First James Comey was a Republican stooge that did more damage to the Democrat party than the Russian trolls ever could do. Then suddenly he became instantly a Democrat stooge from a hero. How does that happen? I think that officials who by law ought to be non-political and serve an elected adminstration (whatever party it comes from) ought to understand that now the political fighting is so abysmally toxic, that they have to approach politicians like when talking to a hostile foreign entity...when it comes to anything that can be used in party politics. You just have to weigh what you say. Whatever you say (or can be depicted to have said) can and will be used to promote the partisan political line. Being non-political or apolitical will simply not be accepted in the current political atmosphere: either you are with their party or you work for the enemy party. If they can use you, they will, and not care at all if then you are forced out.
There cannot be such a grave crisis that these two parties wouldn't think about their partisan objectives and use it to attack the other party in order to win in the next elections. Milley should understand that.
And that's really the sad thing with the US now. At least in my puny small country I know that if and when the shit really hits the fan, the partisan political bickering is put aside and the political parties work as a team and are capable to work as an unified team when the effort is really needed.
With the US I'm really not so sure.