Protect Our Borders

[profitius]

First up – I never said anything about borders either; I just said the mechanisms that draw corporations off shore are decidedly the conditions a libertarian society might generate.

Moving on - there's a bit to unpack here Profitus, but I want to start by focussing on one area in particular that you've raised: that of the value of states and corporations.

You say that corporations wouldn't pay tax. Sounds great in theory, but then what's to stop everyone simply forming corporations and therefore paying no tax?

I'm employed full time by a company, but I also have my own consulting firm that I and an old uni friend run on the side, so under your vision of a libertarian system I could quite easily just go to my employer and tell them to simply pay my corporate entity instead of me.

They'd jump at the opportunity, as it would mean they'd not have to expend any resources' calculating my taxes or things like Superannuation – I'd do it all myself.

But because this would be so obvious, what's to stop pretty well everyone from forming minor "corporations" to operate in this way? And with no companies paying tax, how exactly are you going to fund the state to provide even basic services like hospitals and law enforcement – let alone provide infrastructure and a robust national defence.
There's another issue with the "give corporations more freedom notion" you put forward, which is the fact that corporations are legal entities whose rights are formed and sanctioned by the state.

They wouldn't be worried about avoiding tax because there would be very little tax to pay. As for the highlighted part, its debated by libertarians.

Like a lot of libertarians, you seem not to have any issues with corporations, but hate the state. Famous libertarian thinker Ayn Rand famously explained this rather odd contradiction by arguing that "freedom" simply means

"Freedom from government coercion. It does not mean freedom from the landlord, or freedom from the employer, or freedom from the laws of nature which do not provide men with automatic prosperity."

But back to the point: why do libertarians hate the state? If we go by Rand's comment, then ostensibly because it's a hierarchical power structure which has the capacity to impose its will on the individuals that it "governs," something which libertarians see this as a form of tyranny.

But then what is a corporation? As I stated above, a corporation is state sanctioned and defined organisation of individuals that is treated as a single person with limited liability. But it's more than that, from a structural standpoint, large corporations in particular are essentially mini states: there's one person or a few people at the top, layers of hierarchy beneath them, and orders flow downward which and you have to obey those orders or face the potential of losing your livelihood. So on a fundamental level, why is the "tyranny" of the will of the corporation being imposed upon you superior to the "tyranny" imposed by the state?
You might argue that you can just go and find a corporation that better suits your values; I can quit my job if I hate my boss and just find another one. But then that's also true of the state. If you don't like the values of your government, you are in fact free to renounce your citizenship and go to a country that better mirrors your values. It's certainly harder to shift countries, but depending on the strength and location of the economy you're in, it may not be all that different from having to change jobs.

What I'm getting at here is that states are basically all meta-power structures that have formed quite naturally to manage and ensure the security of nations and provide them with coherence and direction.

I believe corporations control the state. Thats the way the system is set up and thats the way it'll always stay. Governments are easily corrupted so naturally big companies do whatever they can to get the state to pass laws favouring them. I think thats common knowledge. Even well intentioned politicians can be led astray as multi millionaires are in their ear telling them about all the benefits they'll have if they just do this one little, harmless thing.


Corporations themselves have no power over people. No state means they'll have to fight it out on their own which would give them a shock. So both corporations and state are good for each other but not so good for the majority of people.

There's also a game theory element to this that libertarians don't appreciate: if you take away the state, or even strip it down, its capacity to defend itself necessarily becomes weaker. In your world of no corporate taxes, how are you going to pay a standing army, let alone buy its incredibly expensive equipment or engage in the critical R&D into defence tech to help you stay ahead of the game? Other countries aren't going to all suddenly start holding hands and embrace limited government, so you may quickly end up with a foreign regime running you.

You could have a defence tax. One of the things most libertarians agree on.

As a species we are highly predisposed toward hierarchy and social groupings, which is precisely why corporations and states arise. To so heavily differentiate one from the other and throw around words like "freedom" is nice and emotionally satisfying, but it's not rationally consistent and ultimately that's why libertarianism is generally grouped along with socialism in the "it's a nice theory until you think it through" category.

I don't agree with that at all. Who wants to be told what to do? Most people I know hate being told what to do and you can see this in classrooms where they have to use threats to keep the pupils in order. You're threatened if you don't pay a TV licence, pay taxes, jaywalk, defend yourself etc. That doesn't sound like people like hierarchy.

No need to get angry - I just said some of your commentary sounded more like that of a communist than your average libertarian. I didn't actually mean it as an attack on you – communism is after all just the opposite end of the spectrum to libertarianism and I actually think both theories are about as good/bad as each other. So in a sense me saying you sound like a communist is no more and insult than me saying you sound like an actual libertarian.

That said, it is worth pointing out that the first time the term "libertarian" was used in a political sense, it was by Joseph Déjacque, a French anarcho-communist, who ran a publication in called Le Libertaire. This theory of libertarianism was against both state and corporations, rather than just the state and in some senses at least it actually sounds closer to what you advocate.

Regarding your Wall Street comment, you state that:



You haven't explained a single thing with this statement – the entire quote is nothing more than you venting populist banker hate. I asked you HOW Wall Street traders make their money – not for an emotional cry to arms on behalf of all the poor saps who lost out during the GFC when their mutual funds fell through the floor. I get the visceral hate and resentment toward bankers – I honestly do – but a visceral and angry rant on something is not the same as having an argument for how or why to change it.

For the record, America's banking system was heavily DE-regulated by the Clinton administration, so there was less government "interference" in the activities of traders and bankers in the decade up to the GFC. Read about the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, a cornerstone of Depression-era banking regulation, if you want to learn more about it.

In a deregulated banking system incredible gains that CAN be made by engaging in questionable practices (like the sub-prime mortgage strategy). The short term gains of such activities can push its competitors to engage in similar measures and ultimately degrade the entire system.

Now, by contrast, Australia's banking system remains more heavily regulated, with the 'four pillars' policy of the Hawke-Keating government of the early 1990s enshrining into it mechanisms which prevent mergers between Australia's four largest banks. Additionally, commercial banking and investment banking are kept at arms length, something which insulates your average worker who "saves all his life" from shocks in the market unless they play it directly.

What this means is that the market is sustained with a sort of medium level competition (which has since been referred to as "Goldilocks competition" because it ensures competitive behaviour without the dangerous brinkmanship of the US) and a strong regulatory system governing how the industry operates, this sort of thing is harder to do, whilst there also being less incentive to do so.

I'm simplifying here, but the problem in the U.S. was a LACK of rules governing banking; there was little in place preventing banks from handing out massive loans to people who couldn't afford them, and there was every incentive for the banks to do it because the commission structure the bankers were working off with the loans meant the short term gains for dishing out these "low doc loans" were worth it.

A libertarian system would tend toward the U.S. approach rather than the Australian approach, essentially arguing that you let people make their bets and the chips will fall where they may.

A libertarian system would be neither the US or Australian approach. It would indeed let the banks fail. Why not? Are they too big to fail? In Ireland instead of letting the banks fail and the banks' owners in Germany and other parts losing their money, the Irish people have to pay for it. Once again the big profit while the little pay because thats the way things are set up.


The way you see things is you're seeing how a libertarian system would work in the current system. Thats not the right way to look at things because things would be completely different in a libertarian system and people would have different mentalities. There wouldn't be all the money gambled in stock markets as there is today, people could save their own money knowing that it won't lose all its value down the line etc.


To transition to a libertarian society wouldn't be done straight away because there would be chaos but it could easily be done bit by bit.

It is how it currently works indeed. That's because the system of most western democracies is a capitalist one with socialist elements in areas like welfare, education etc. In essence our societies are a mix of libertarian and socialist values with capitalist economics.

I don't personally have a problem with that, but to be clear, in your view it's fine for Messi to get €500k per week while, but bankers are thieves? I hate to break it to you, but people "pay their money" to bankers just as much as they do to Messi. You don't have to keep your money with a bank that engages in risky behaviour, but then in a libertarian system you wouldn't necessarily know either, as there'd be no rules demanding disclosure for that sort of thing.

Here's a fun though experiment: if a rich banker decided to buy some struggling soccer club and then lure the best talent in the world to it with his private stash, would that be ok?

Sure, if a country allows its bankers to gamble excessively with the currency, they can damage the wider economy, but then in New Zealand when the All Blacks get knocked out of the world cup the crime rate and domestic violence stats all go up, so sport isn't without its knock on effects either.

In any case a libertarian system would have little say over the actions and risks of bankers, because libertarians don't like to get involved in the private issues of corporations – and contrary to popular belief banks are actually corporations (and thus wouldn't pay tax in your world).

We're not in a capitalist system its a corporatist system disguised as capitalist. Thats the big mistake people make.


I'm not saying bankers are thieves. I've nothing against them. My problem is with the cosy relationship between big business and the state. If there are loopholes there that big business can benefit from, its really the people putting the loopholes there that are the problem ie politicians.


Banks in a libertarian system would be very different. For starters there wouldn't be the boom and bust financial cycles as there is today. Todays system is like taking drugs. Short term nirvana but the price is paid down the line. A libertarian system is more steady with less wild financial gambling etc. Steady growth is the order of the day. I would also imagine there would be more banks to choose from.

Ok, so here's the thing – I get that it intuitively might make sense that places with more guns = more risk aversion = less murders. But it's a fallacy – yes it sounds logical and reasonable, but real world statistics on violent crimes just don't back it up…

You seem to like focussing on the U.S. But even if you to go on the U.S. alone, your "big cities" argument doesn't hold up. What's the most densely populated metropolitan area in America?

New York City, and by a fair margin. Now, check out the violent crime statistics by city released by the FBI summarised on this wiki page for the most recent stats in 2012: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_United_States_cities_by_crime_rate_(2012)
Now you've done that, explain to me why New York City, with 8 million people, has HALF the murder rate of Houston Texas and less than half the rate of Dallas – home of the Dallas crime family and the place you "don't think are as likely to threaten violence as the mafia in NY"

It's also worth pointing out that rape and robbery rates also happen to be quite a lot lower in New York City than both Dallas and Houston.

Moreover, looking back at Australia we've had ZERO mass killings since the enactment of tougher gun laws by the Howard government in the 90s. Sure, criminals still manage to smuggle them illegally in certain places, but the NRA argument of "laws against guns just means outlaws have all the guns" is a little like arguing we should also make all illicit drugs legal, along with murder, rape and child pornography, because f##k it, people break the law anyway, so why bother, right?

To go even further, take a look at Japan – a country with heavily populated cities across its tiny landmass that dwarf many of America's biggest cities. Gun laws in Japan are EVEN STRICTER than Australia, and guess what? The have a lower rate of violent crime and murder than Australia – in fact it's one of the lowest in the world.

Again, how does the gun availability theory explain that?

Austin, Texas has lower than NY. Why is Dallas so high, it could be many factors. It has a large hispanic population which could be a factor.


Well heres the things about guns in the USA. They're there for a number of reasons. One of them is to protect themselves from others with guns. Another is to protect the people from the government! The founding fathers of the USA were wise men. If you think it sounds far fetched, look around the world at all the rouge governments and all the carnage they caused not to mention the millions of lives lost.


Why the low crime rate in Japan? Maybe they're less violent as a race? Maybe they drink less? Maybe theres less violence on TV? Maybe its impossible to get away with gun crime in a heavily populated urban area? You see there are numerous questions.

To round off on this little essay, can I just note that a lot your posts are filled with comments like "I haven't looked into it yet," "I imagine [x] would work [x] way," or "I'm not sure about that, but…" and yet in the first line you claim that you "know that in a libertarian system everyone would be much better off."

With such limited data to work off and only a loose idea of what libertarianism actually is how could you possibly be sure people would be better off?

I get that you're coming from this with good intentions, but like a lot of things political theory is something in which the Dunning-Kruger effect is very much at play; the less people know the more confident they are in what little they do. But the deeper you get and the more you learn, the less sure you become.

I'd suggest reading some of Stiglitz and Krugman to compliment the Friedman and Rand you've been exposed to via Youtube – that will help you test the mettle of your current convictions and like Michael Shermer's decision to challenge his creationism with a biology course, you may be pleasantly surprised at where it takes you.

Indeed.


When I say I havn't looked into it yet, its really only the little details. Its like you're after building a (libertarian) house but are still undecided on the furniture.
Btw, I've more than a loose idea of what libertarianism is. You seem to be getting confused on occasions, not me.


I've seen a bit of Krugman and don't agree with him at all. In fact he is a well known shill.
http://www.jeremyrhammond.com/2012/...olf-in-sheeps-clothing-a-shill-for-the-banks/
http://www.bizpacreview.com/2013/05...paul-krugman-a-fact-fudging-incompetent-66974
https://mises.ca/posts/blog/paul-krugman-the-marxist/

Ron Paul vs Krugman. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLJeeAb65R0
Ron Paul vs Krugman2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEoGKpnutyA
Peter Schiff on Krugman https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T1WUQRc33OA

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Stop it, you're killing me. Alongside the entry for 'hypocrisy' in the dictionary, there ought to be a picture of Ron Paul. He's a Republican then he isn't, then he is again. He worships Reagan, the he doesn't, isntead blaming Reagan for everything. He publishes highly inflammatory, racist newsletters, but actually he didn't, because one of his staff did it, although he doesn't know which one. He doesn't believe in the federal legislature's right to legalise abortion (or otherwise) but he's deliriously happy to let the states stamp all over women's rights. He's a parody of a politician. If you wanted to select a representative for your views, you're picked a LuLu.

So you're telling me he displays human characteristics? well done.

 

[RoosTah]

They wouldn't be worried about avoiding tax because there would be very little tax to pay. As for the highlighted part, its debated by libertarians

I believe corporations control the state. Thats the way the system is set up and thats the way it'll always stay. Governments are easily corrupted so naturally big companies do whatever they can to get the state to pass laws favouring them. I think thats common knowledge. Even well intentioned politicians can be led astray as multi millionaires are in their ear telling them about all the benefits they'll have if they just do this one little, harmless thing.


Corporations themselves have no power over people. No state means they'll have to fight it out on their own which would give them a shock. So both corporations and state are good for each other but not so good for the majority of people.

You could have a defence tax. One of the things most libertarians agree on.

So you'd have a defence tax, but there'd be little tax to pay? How does that work in an arms race exactly? How do you continue to keep taxes low, fund critical defence R&D and buy the necessary weapons and advances? Again, game theory. Just because you like low taxes and a minimal state doesn't mean your neighbour with a billion people and an authoritarian grip on its people will care.

I don't agree with that at all. Who wants to be told what to do? Most people I know hate being told what to do and you can see this in classrooms where they have to use threats to keep the pupils in order. You're threatened if you don't pay a TV licence, pay taxes, jaywalk, defend yourself etc. That doesn't sound like people like hierarchy.

So you're basing your political theory on misbehaving kids in classrooms? I never said people "like" hierarchy - I said we were predisposed to it. Why? Power. Like it or not some people will always be bigger, strong, smarter or just plain know more people and be better organised. You don't like people telling you what to do? Welcome to reality. As Nietzsche well understood, all relationships involve some level of power exchange. The state simply attempts to even that exchange out in areas where it threatens to get out of control.

It's a nice and fluffy thing to say that "we should all be free to do what we want," but that world doesn't exist and it never has or could.

A libertarian system would be neither the US or Australian approach. It would indeed let the banks fail. Why not? Are they too big to fail? In Ireland instead of letting the banks fail and the banks' owners in Germany and other parts losing their money, the Irish people have to pay for it. Once again the big profit while the little pay because thats the way things are set up.

There's an argument for letting them fail, but the financial system is decidedly a zero sum game - letting a lot of big banks fail has its benefits, but the survivors of such a calamity will fill that space, in effect leaving a smaller number of even bigger players.

Banks in a libertarian system would be very different. For starters there wouldn't be the boom and bust financial cycles as there is today. Todays system is like taking drugs. Short term nirvana but the price is paid down the line. A libertarian system is more steady with less wild financial gambling etc. Steady growth is the order of the day. I would also imagine there would be more banks to choose from.

How? How on earth would you eliminate booms and busts? That's how markets work! Markets aren't rational - they're driven by speculators and emotional highs. The only way you can eliminate booms and busts is by essentially regulating the **** out of the market to make it about as free Mao's China.

Again, I hear a lot of "a libertarian system would be better" type comments from you along with cute sounding analogies for why our current system is bad, but you're very weak on details. Explain to me in DETAIL how a libertarian system - a system that is all about letting people and organisations do what they like - coudl POSSIBLY eliminate booms and busts from banks or any other market (and like it or not the financial system is a market).

Austin, Texas has lower than NY. Why is Dallas so high, it could be many factors. It has a large hispanic population which could be a factor.


Well heres the things about guns in the USA. They're there for a number of reasons. One of them is to protect themselves from others with guns. Another is to protect the people from the government! The founding fathers of the USA were wise men. If you think it sounds far fetched, look around the world at all the rouge governments and all the carnage they caused not to mention the millions of lives lost.


Why the low crime rate in Japan? Maybe they're less violent as a race? Maybe they drink less? Maybe theres less violence on TV? Maybe its impossible to get away with gun crime in a heavily populated urban area? You see there are numerous questions.

Did you really just say that?

Mate, just fess up and admit you've got nothing.

Those aren't "numerous questions" you've posed - they're extremely poor attempts at explaining away the holes I've pointed in your hypothesis that "tighter gun control = more violent crime."

You're honestly telling me the Japanese - the people responsible for close to half a million deaths in China during world war II and untold brutalities across Asia - are a less "violent people"? I won't even bother with the violent TV nonsense, because if you'd spent five minutes there and seen some of their cartoons you'd know that's BS. They also drink a **** load for the record.
Got an explanation for New York? Do they have less immigrants, violent TV or alcohol too? Are they a less violent race?

As for America and needing guns to protect yourself from the government... well, it's cute that you buy that is all I can say. Honest question: how useful is a load of amo and a bunch of machine guns against the US military's long rang drone strike capabilities? How does a shotgun do against a B2 Bomber? Seriously, people who argue that freedom to own guns in some way could protect you against the most sophisticated and well funded military in the history of the world aren't just delusional, they're pretty dim. It made sense 250 years ago when the government was armed with similar technology to your every day militia, but it's pretty stupid in this day and age when the government things like nuclear submarines with payloads that can wipe out entire countries.

When I say I havn't looked into it yet, its really only the little details. Its like you're after building a (libertarian) house but are still undecided on the furniture.
Btw, I've more than a loose idea of what libertarianism is. You seem to be getting confused on occasions, not me.

I'm not confused mate - I'm just trying to cut through all your deflections, limited use of facts and inability to explain how all these apparently wonderful libertarian systems are going to deliver humanity from its genetically in built predispositions to create, dominate and subject at the expense of others.

To be honest, the fact you think a libertarian system wouldn't have booms and busts in the financial sector tells me pretty well everything I need to know about how well you understand the thinking of guys like Adam Smith. Have you ever sat down and read Wealth of Nations by the way? Or do you confine yourself to blogs and youtube videos?

Lastly, are you Irish or American? Because if I had to guess I'd say you're American.

 

[valley commando]

He must be American

 

[YoungScud]

"You're threatened if you don't pay a TV licence, pay taxes, jaywalk, defend yourself etc. That doesn't sound like people like hierarchy."

Interesting. You're threatened if you murder or steal too. It's called law, ad libertarians appear to believe in law. Your hero Ron paul would love to use the law to prevent abortions. Is he wrong? As far as I can see, libertarianism isn't built around any reasonable idea of freedom, but around narrow self-interest. "I want to be free to act as I damn well please, regardless of the effect on my neighbours, but don't you dare try to exercise your freedom around me."

 

[profitius]

So you'd have a defence tax, but there'd be little tax to pay? How does that work in an arms race exactly? How do you continue to keep taxes low, fund critical defence R&D and buy the necessary weapons and advances? Again, game theory. Just because you like low taxes and a minimal state doesn't mean your neighbour with a billion people and an authoritarian grip on its people will care.

Australia's military is 1.8% of GDP. United States is about 4%. Irelands is .5%.

So you're basing your political theory on misbehaving kids in classrooms? I never said people "like" hierarchy - I said we were predisposed to it. Why? Power. Like it or not some people will always be bigger, strong, smarter or just plain know more people and be better organised. You don't like people telling you what to do? Welcome to reality. As Nietzsche well understood, all relationships involve some level of power exchange. The state simply attempts to even that exchange out in areas where it threatens to get out of control.

It's a nice and fluffy thing to say that "we should all be free to do what we want," but that world doesn't exist and it never has or could.

Thats not what I'm saying at all. Let the local community run itself instead of the government making all the rules. They can make their own rules like communities have been doing since humans walked the earth. Big government, one size fits all, is a recent phenomenon.

There's an argument for letting them fail, but the financial system is decidedly a zero sum game - letting a lot of big banks fail has its benefits, but the survivors of such a calamity will fill that space, in effect leaving a smaller number of even bigger players.

Iceland let their banks go bust and their economic recovery is a victory for the Icelandic people. Meanwhile the Irish people have to pay back the "bailout" Ireland's banks got. And those banks are owned by wealthy foreigners as well as Irish.

How? How on earth would you eliminate booms and busts? That's how markets work! Markets aren't rational - they're driven by speculators and emotional highs. The only way you can eliminate booms and busts is by essentially regulating the **** out of the market to make it about as free Mao's China.

Again, I hear a lot of "a libertarian system would be better" type comments from you along with cute sounding analogies for why our current system is bad, but you're very weak on details. Explain to me in DETAIL how a libertarian system - a system that is all about letting people and organisations do what they like - coudl POSSIBLY eliminate booms and busts from banks or any other market (and like it or not the financial system is a market).

I have been explaining.


A good example I heard. Britain's ship building industry was in decline and so the British government started to pump money into it so they could compete with other countries. At the time Poland was buying ships off the British ship builders and as the economist pointed out, in reality the British tax payer was subsidizing the Polish buyers! Thats typical of the wastage when the state gets involved. Sure, it looks great and wins votes but it isn't very efficient. It distortes prices and prices are at the heart of what makes an economy work. If they're distorted, its like traffic lights not working properly which results in chaos and inefficiency.


I didn't say there wouldn't be booms and bursts, just that they would be on a small scale and sort themself out naturally. The free market is like an ant colony. It just work! Now, imagine trying to put loads of rules and regulations for the ants to follow. Do you think the colony would run as smoothly? Its laughable to think that anyone can manage it better than letting the ants/nature because its too complex! It works because each individual ant gets on with their own job, NOT because some king ant has given them a detailed set of instructions.

Did you really just say that?

Mate, just fess up and admit you've got nothing.

Those aren't "numerous questions" you've posed - they're extremely poor attempts at explaining away the holes I've pointed in your hypothesis that "tighter gun control = more violent crime."

You're honestly telling me the Japanese - the people responsible for close to half a million deaths in China during world war II and untold brutalities across Asia - are a less "violent people"? I won't even bother with the violent TV nonsense, because if you'd spent five minutes there and seen some of their cartoons you'd know that's BS. They also drink a **** load for the record.
Got an explanation for New York? Do they have less immigrants, violent TV or alcohol too? Are they a less violent race?


As for America and needing guns to protect yourself from the government... well, it's cute that you buy that is all I can say. Honest question: how useful is a load of amo and a bunch of machine guns against the US military's long rang drone strike capabilities? How does a shotgun do against a B2 Bomber? Seriously, people who argue that freedom to own guns in some way could protect you against the most sophisticated and well funded military in the history of the world aren't just delusional, they're pretty dim. It made sense 250 years ago when the government was armed with similar technology to your every day militia, but it's pretty stupid in this day and age when the government things like nuclear submarines with payloads that can wipe out entire countries.

You should study warfare. The Irish didn't gain independence by outgunning the British. Guerilla warfare. And I doubt US would use nuclear weapons in their own back yard.

I'm not confused mate - I'm just trying to cut through all your deflections, limited use of facts and inability to explain how all these apparently wonderful libertarian systems are going to deliver humanity from its genetically in built predispositions to create, dominate and subject at the expense of others.

To be honest, the fact you think a libertarian system wouldn't have booms and busts in the financial sector tells me pretty well everything I need to know about how well you understand the thinking of guys like Adam Smith. Have you ever sat down and read Wealth of Nations by the way? Or do you confine yourself to blogs and youtube videos?

Lastly, are you Irish or American? Because if I had to guess I'd say you're American.

I didn't say there wouldn't be booms or busts. I said they would be on a small scale to the ones we currently have. I said wealth wouldn't be transfered to the wealthy as easily.


Interestingly the Austrian school of economics (which I prefer) says that theres a massive financial collapse on the way while the Keynesian (which you prefer) says everything is fine and just keep printing fake money and spending.


100% Irish, why?

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"You're threatened if you don't pay a TV licence, pay taxes, jaywalk, defend yourself etc. That doesn't sound like people like hierarchy."

Interesting. You're threatened if you murder or steal too. It's called law, ad libertarians appear to believe in law. Your hero Ron paul would love to use the law to prevent abortions. Is he wrong? As far as I can see, libertarianism isn't built around any reasonable idea of freedom, but around narrow self-interest. "I want to be free to act as I damn well please, regardless of the effect on my neighbours, but don't you dare try to exercise your freedom around me."

I presume Ron Paul thinks that abortion is murder and goes against the libertarian principle non-aggression principle. Anyway it doesn't seem like you get it if you think a libertarian is about narrow self interest. Its the opposite, where people should be more free and not told to do by narrow self interested people or groups.

 

[RoosTah]

Australia's military is 1.8% of GDP. United States is about 4%. Irelands is .5%.

GDP is an incredibly misleading measure for talking about military expenditure. The government doesn't have access to the country's entire GDP, so why would you use it as a measure? Well governments like to use it because it plays down their spending. Indeed, the actual spend and the stated spend are often two different things anyway, as many governments (including the U.S.) won't count vast areas of military servicing expenditure (things like food, maintenance and in some cases the salaries of non-combat military personnell are all excluded from the official defence statistics) in order to keep the figure down. Japan are great at this - they have a stated policy of keeping Defence GDP at around 1%, but they achieve that by not counting all sorts of military related R&D, civilian military servicing and even weapons themselves (usually by staggering payments in clever ways over long periods of time).

But back to GDP - You point out that the U.S. spends 4%. Sounds nice and cheap until you look at what that is as a percentage of the entire federal budget. If you look at it on that measure, it's 20%. In reality of course when you add in the "black budgets" of sections of the intelligence community it's even greater.

So yeah, calculating defence on a GDP basis is incredibly misleading and you're not gonna be saved come tax time in an arms race unless you're happy to let your essentially services and infrastructure rot.

Thats not what I'm saying at all. Let the local community run itself instead of the government making all the rules. They can make their own rules like communities have been doing since humans walked the earth. Big government, one size fits all, is a recent phenomenon.

Again, this is one of those "sounds nice in theory" things. Local communities and councils are already hotbeds of in fighting petty vendetta's and self interest. In Australia and the United States the amount of autonomy we give our states allows for a version of what you seek, but in Australia it has also had its drawbacks. Nation building infrastructure projects become much harder for one thing - our rail networks won't connect up because each state wanted to do things their own way and they all used different track widths. Imagine giving that amount of autonomy to every community - it'd make building any connective infrastructure ****ing impossible.

Iceland let their banks go bust and their economic recovery is a victory for the Icelandic people. Meanwhile the Irish people have to pay back the "bailout" Ireland's banks got. And those banks are owned by wealthy foreigners as well as Irish.

Again, not entirely against letting the banks fail, but in a country like the U.S. with the amount of leverage there, there were still risks both ways. I agree with what Iceland did though, even if it made borrowing tricky there for them.

I didn't say there wouldn't be booms and bursts

Actually, yes you did:

Banks in a libertarian system would be very different. For starters there wouldn't be the boom and bust financial cycles as there is today.

This next bit is a bit weird though...

The free market is like an ant colony. It just work! Now, imagine trying to put loads of rules and regulations for the ants to follow. Do you think the colony would run as smoothly? Its laughable to think that anyone can manage it better than letting the ants/nature because its too complex! It works because each individual ant gets on with their own job, NOT because some king ant has given them a detailed set of instructions.

This is another one of your cute analogies. The Free Market is nothing like an ant colony - an ant colony is a hive mind in which the entire colony all essentially pursue a singular and common purpose. The communists had that model for humanity in mind when they were constructing their planned economies. Such notions couldn't have been further from the mind of men like Smith.

You should study warfare. The Irish didn't gain independence by outgunning the British. Guerilla warfare. And I doubt US would use nuclear weapons in their own back yard.

Funny you should mention that. I have a Masters Degree in Strategic Affairs and Defence Policy from the ANU as it happens, and one of areas I did quite a bit on was Counterinsurgency Warfare. I happen to know an awful lot about the Irish War of Independence, the thinking of Michael Collins and the effectiveness of his strategy against the Royal Irish Constabulary Guard.

That was 100 years ago, but even still the British learned from that and I'd suggest you read about the Malayan Emergency and how the British managed to crush that uprising by using slow and methodical control and command methods mixed with targeted propaganda and intelligence networks.

As for America, they wouldn't use nukes on their own people, but technically the U.S. could legally use drone strike assassinations of terror suspects on US territory. Now, you might believe in your heart of hearts that a Michael Collins style uprising would be possible with light arms in America, but you haven't thought it through. First up, in Ireland the British were occupiers - and being an occupier makes control harder because you are always under threat of betrayal. Second, their intelligence network was limited - indeed so limited Collins was able to wipe out their key eyes and ears in one afternoon (Bloody Sunday), and third, the British armaments were still not significantly more advanced than the IRA militias in terms of their ground warfare.

None of this applies to the U.S. - It is THEIR country to start with, so they don't need "collaborators"; they have the most expensive and sophisticated intelligence network that has ever existed - something which makes planning any sort of organised and large scale attacks extremely difficult; and finally their arms just not only bigger, but significantly more effective. The U.S. doesn't need to launch nuclear weapons - that was just an example of the mismatch - but taking them on with small arms would be akin to taking on a man with a gatling gun with brass knuckles.

One question: you mention corruption a lot, but has it occurred to you that the NRA may well have itself been corrupted by major arms manufacturers who get a lot of benefit from fearful working class white Americans buying their machine guns? Or do you think they're above corruption and don't lie out of self interest?

100% Irish, why?

Just curious - I haven't ever come across anyone outside of America that believes the NRA's BS before.

 

[Mcfadden]

You should study warfare. The Irish didn't gain independence by outgunning the British. Guerilla warfare. And I doubt US would use nuclear weapons in their own back yard.

Lol

I love how you add the winky face as if to make out how ridiculous the other side is being. "I doubt US would use nuclear weapons in their own backyard" .. no **** sherlock. You're telling the story of a citizenry needing all these guns in case the Government turns on it. The point was being made that even if they were brave enough to defend themselves in that crazy scenario, they still wouldn't have a slither of hope against the might of the U.S military. This doomsday scenario hasn't happened. It's not going to happen. Theres so many checks and balances in the U.S as there is that hardly anything gets done as it is. The whole idea of protecting a community by more violence is laughable, so laughable. It's got nothing to do with any amendment (which would hardly apply to 2015 anyway in the context in which it was written). It's more to do with the NRA funding political campaigns who back off from gun restrictions.

I presume Ron Paul thinks that abortion is murder and goes against the libertarian principle non-aggression principle. Anyway it doesn't seem like you get it if you think a libertarian is about narrow self interest. Its the opposite, where people should be more free and not told to do by narrow self interested people or groups.

Don't make excuses for him. This is just symptomatic of Ron Paul - he is inconsistent on the issues. Nothing to do with non-aggression principle. It's more simple than that. It's what we call in politics "swallowing a dead rat." There's a few lines that you don't stray from when you're part of a Republican National debate. You believe in God, you believe marriage is between a man and a woman, and aborting an unwanted baby is inherently wrong. Personal choice goes out the window when it suits them, because as we saw in the campaign of George Bush with the Evangelists, the religious right wield a lot of money and power.

Locally run communities and cultures can work in some ways, and be disastrous in others. Living off the land, minimizing impacts on global warming by engaging with a more shared and sustainable way of living - sure, those can be benefits. But a lot of financial aid, support services, savings initiatives to close deficits, management of incentives and moralistic frameworks come from a democratically elected Government. I agree with the sentiment that too much government can be stiffling. But theres a big difference between that, and a way of living in which there is hardly any Government whatsoever other than to provide the bare bones basics. I've been around long enough to know what countries are like where the Government tries to cut it's services in the name of efficiency, personal freedom, less nanny-State. And it's not much fun. Every week is a struggle.

 

[Peat]

The argument I've seen presented a couple of times by pro-gun rights Americans is that the guns won't protect them from the US military because they can fight them; it protects them from strongarm police tactics and the like because it ensures a level of violence and bad publicity will occur in such a thing that neither side wants. Needless to say, that stops working the moment that level of violence isn't bad publicity; I would suggest at the moment, we are seeing that the iPhone is far more successful than a gun in highlighting this.

Still, what I think we can all agree with is that if the US somehow got into a shooting war with a major proportion of its citizenry, then said citizenry would be fubared. Well, all apart from profitus.

 

[Mcfadden]

Yeah. One thing is for certain, I'm just pleased that advocates for pro-gun rights are perfectly reasonable, level headed people who are deeeeeeefinitely not certifiably insane.

 

[ncurd]

Some pro gun guys are perfectly sane people....they are of course completely wrong but not nut jobs.

For instance the Piers Morgan issue you honestly don't think they just booked the craziest guy they could find to support Morgans agenda. Alot of pro gun guys were mortified this guy was representing them.

Just point out I am 100% opposed to the average person owning a gun just saying you can't reduce an argument down because of a few crazies.

 

[Mcfadden]

That is true, and I am generalizing. As with anything, there are sane people out there. There are guns rights advocates who do favor the most basic of background checks and safety training and tutorials. But the notion that Alex Jones is some sad git in the corner with serious delusions, who only speaks for himself, is wrong. He has a massive following, and messages which are completely unreasonable and parroted all the time. It's not just a few bad apples. It's widespread

What about the NRA commentator, Billy Johnson, who came out and said that children handling a firearm should be as necessary as reading and writing in order to advance to the next grade?

Then there's people like Jim Cooley who think carrying a 100 round AR-15 around an airport is actually okay, and not a big deal. Even if your state had open-carry laws, don't you think someone would have to be a few sandwhiches short of a picnic to not draw some basic boundaries? Sorry, but if you think your right to do anything takes priority over the safety of yourself and others then you are bonkers.

Also James Yeager, a CEO in Tennesse who said about gun control "if that happens it's going to spark a Civil War, and I'll be glad to fire the first shot. I'm not gonna put up with it. If it goes one inch further, I'm gonna start killing people." Then he later backtracked and said he wouldn't kill anyone.........unless absolutely necessary.

I get that you can can pull up crazy arguments for anything. But these are stories that I can remember, and have found within the space of about 10 minutes. They happen every day, or every other day over in the States. A lot of those advocates, from CEOs, to the everyday working man, to the NRA itself are really under this illusion that they're in a movie, and somebody out there is going to take away their freedom. Either that or a Zombie apocalypse (and no, that isn't a joke. There are stories that have been done on that too.)

And then there are a lot of ones who are sane, but are content with lies, mischaracterizations, fear mongering and contributing to the issue that is money in politics (which is a systemic issue rather than their fault admittedly, but they certainly engage with it more than a lot of institutions).

 

[profitius]

GDP is an incredibly misleading measure for talking about military expenditure. The government doesn't have access to the country's entire GDP, so why would you use it as a measure? Well governments like to use it because it plays down their spending. Indeed, the actual spend and the stated spend are often two different things anyway, as many governments (including the U.S.) won't count vast areas of military servicing expenditure (things like food, maintenance and in some cases the salaries of non-combat military personnell are all excluded from the official defence statistics) in order to keep the figure down. Japan are great at this - they have a stated policy of keeping Defence GDP at around 1%, but they achieve that by not counting all sorts of military related R&D, civilian military servicing and even weapons themselves (usually by staggering payments in clever ways over long periods of time).

But back to GDP - You point out that the U.S. spends 4%. Sounds nice and cheap until you look at what that is as a percentage of the entire federal budget. If you look at it on that measure, it's 20%. In reality of course when you add in the "black budgets" of sections of the intelligence community it's even greater.

So yeah, calculating defence on a GDP basis is incredibly misleading and you're not gonna be saved come tax time in an arms race unless you're happy to let your essentially services and infrastructure rot.

They're not really misleading. Even if not 100% accurate, its still going to be a small amount of tax money. The USA have bases in 140 countries and are waging a war in the middle east so they're an exception. If Ron Paul got his way he would immediately pull the US out of every country and slash military spending. Thats the libertarian way.

Again, this is one of those "sounds nice in theory" things. Local communities and councils are already hotbeds of in fighting petty vendetta's and self interest. In Australia and the United States the amount of autonomy we give our states allows for a version of what you seek, but in Australia it has also had its drawbacks. Nation building infrastructure projects become much harder for one thing - our rail networks won't connect up because each state wanted to do things their own way and they all used different track widths. Imagine giving that amount of autonomy to every community - it'd make building any connective infrastructure ****ing impossible.

Lets look at the railway situation you mention. Once again highlights how inefficient peoples taxes are used and wasted. Private companies built the America rail system, coast to coast, including over an through the rockies. This in the 1800s! Libertarians would have gotten private companies to build it and you can be sure there wouldn't be all the wastage that there currently is.

This is another one of your cute analogies. The Free Market is nothing like an ant colony - an ant colony is a hive mind in which the entire colony all essentially pursue a singular and common purpose. The communists had that model for humanity in mind when they were constructing their planned economies. Such notions couldn't have been further from the mind of men like Smith.

Thats the wrong way to look at it. Its a system. Ants don't have to be told what to do, they just go ahead and help build their community because like humans, it comes naturally! Communism runs things from the top down and tries to control complex systems. There are no king ants telling the others what to do. Imagine in some fantasyworld the ants turned communistic though. For starters, half the ants would be required to do paperwork so straight away productivity would be halved. Thats before all the other inefficiencies of a communist system is taken into account. Its no wonder the Soviet Union ground to a halt, as predicted by the Austrian school economists, the school of economics that most libertarians follow.

Funny you should mention that. I have a Masters Degree in Strategic Affairs and Defence Policy from the ANU as it happens, and one of areas I did quite a bit on was Counterinsurgency Warfare. I happen to know an awful lot about the Irish War of Independence, the thinking of Michael Collins and the effectiveness of his strategy against the Royal Irish Constabulary Guard.

That was 100 years ago, but even still the British learned from that and I'd suggest you read about the Malayan Emergency and how the British managed to crush that uprising by using slow and methodical control and command methods mixed with targeted propaganda and intelligence networks.

As for America, they wouldn't use nukes on their own people, but technically the U.S. could legally use drone strike assassinations of terror suspects on US territory. Now, you might believe in your heart of hearts that a Michael Collins style uprising would be possible with light arms in America, but you haven't thought it through. First up, in Ireland the British were occupiers - and being an occupier makes control harder because you are always under threat of betrayal. Second, their intelligence network was limited - indeed so limited Collins was able to wipe out their key eyes and ears in one afternoon (Bloody Sunday), and third, the British armaments were still not significantly more advanced than the IRA militias in terms of their ground warfare.

None of this applies to the U.S. - It is THEIR country to start with, so they don't need "collaborators"; they have the most expensive and sophisticated intelligence network that has ever existed - something which makes planning any sort of organised and large scale attacks extremely difficult; and finally their arms just not only bigger, but significantly more effective. The U.S. doesn't need to launch nuclear weapons - that was just an example of the mismatch - but taking them on with small arms would be akin to taking on a man with a gatling gun with brass knuckles.

One question: you mention corruption a lot, but has it occurred to you that the NRA may well have itself been corrupted by major arms manufacturers who get a lot of benefit from fearful working class white Americans buying their machine guns? Or do you think they're above corruption and don't lie out of self interest?


Just curious - I haven't ever come across anyone outside of America that believes the NRA's BS before.

2 words (not just for you but for the others on this thread also). Nazis + Switzerland.


The reason that Switzerland was too difficult to invade—in contrast to all the other nations which Hitler conquered in a matter of weeks—was the Swiss militia system. Unlike all the other nations of Europe, which relied on a standing army, Switzerland was (and still is) defended by a universal militia. Every man was trained in war, had his rifle at home, was encouraged to practice frequently, and could be mobilized almost instantly. The Swiss militiaman was under orders to fight to the last bullet, and after that, with his bayonet, and after that, with his bare hands. Rather than having to defeat an army, Hitler would have had to defeat a whole people.

Conversely, the Swiss citizen militia, with its extensive network of fortifications, had no offensive capability. The Swiss militia was not going to sweep into Berlin; modern Swiss-bashers who condemn the nation for not declaring war fail to understand that by keeping the Axis out of Switzerland, the Swiss were already doing everything they could for the Allied cause.

From the Anschluss of Austria to the Fall of France, Hitler swallowed nation after nation where cowardly ruling elites surrendered the country to the Nazis—either before the shooting began, or a few weeks afterward. But such a surrender would have been impossible in Switzerland, explains Halbrook. The Swiss governmental system was decentralized, with the separate 26 cantons, not the federal government, having the authority. The federal government did notify the Swiss people that in case of a German invasion, any claim that there had been a Swiss surrender should be disregarded as Nazi propaganda. And because the military power was in the hands of every Swiss man, the federal government would have been unable to surrender had it ever wanted to. Nothing could stop the Swiss militiamen from fighting to the very end.
America's Founders admired Switzerland as a "Sister Republic" amidst the despotisms of Europe. The American Founders—like the Swiss—understood the moral implications of a universal militia system: a people who are trained to self-reliance and responsibility will defend their freedom to the utmost. But a people who rely on a professional standing army may not have the nerve to resist tyranny.
http://www.sightm1911.com/lib/rkba/swiss_militia.htm


So for all their military superiority, the Germans stayed away from Switzerland.


Re Ireland. Remember the IRA had very few gun at the time too. Sure there were weapon but they were scarce, not like in the USA and Switzerland.

Re USA. Theres no way their army could attack the people if the people keep their guns. For starters the army need a lot of taxes to keep it going! So that would be stopped. Food supplies would be damaged, machinery parts would be scarce, fuel supplies hit and they would need to be protected at all times. Also you'd have to take the human aspect into account. As you mention, the US army would not be an invading force so the soldiers would be shooting at their own people. I doubt that would happen too easily.

Re the NRA. Of course they're getting money from the gun makers. All sides are being funded one way or another but it doesn't mean they are not right in their beliefs. Its the people who want to take the guns away that I don't trust and especially the media who never mention that most of those mass killers are off their heads on prescription drugs.

 

[j'nuh]

 

[YoungScud]

I presume Ron Paul thinks that abortion is murder and goes against the libertarian principle non-aggression principle. Anyway it doesn't seem like you get it if you think a libertarian is about narrow self interest. Its the opposite, where people should be more free and not told to do by narrow self interested people or groups.

No, Ron Paul is the archetypal hypocrite, because he bleats about morality and freedom of choice while advocating removal of federal powers (in other words, protection by the Constitution via the Supreme Court) to states' legislatures, where he knows that quite a few states will agree with his idea of forcing the morality of stupid white men on women. I don't care if he doesn't agree with Roe v Wade. It doesn't matter, because the Constitution he claims to love is policed by the Supreme Court which made that decision, as well as othesr with which he does agree. He wants to pick and choose, and make no mistake, he wants Ron Paul to be making the decisions.