In which antivaccinationist Ginger Taylor is taught a lesson, and not by Orac

Voting for our government to use guns to give money to help poor and suffering people is immoral self-righteous bullying laziness.”

Please document a single instance where the government used guns to give money to help poor and suffering people.

@Shay

I think late onset mental retardation should be replaced with "socialist."

How come not one person has defended government? The closest answer anyone has given is that "in a libertarian society people would be dying in the streets."

Capitalism has taken hundreds of millions of people out of poverty.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRNNkQPCOXo

I think late onset mental retardation should be replaced with “socialist.”

Ah, so you're ableist too!

@lilady

I've paid income taxes. I worked for several years before going to dental school. I've also paid property taxes, gasoline taxes, sales taxes, ecotaxes, alcohol taxes, tobacco taxes, and a laundry list of other taxes.

Over the course of my dental career I will also pay a million plus in income tax.

So don't condescend me like I am a freeloader.

I will also be $330,000 in debt to trian in a profession that gives back to society more than any other- medicine.

What have you done to justify your sickening self-righteousness?

@lilady

Oh and the government taxed over 30% of what I earned substite teaching. At the time, despite having a Master of Science, I was pulling up dirty carpets and toilets out of apartments to eat. But then again I refused to take food stamps, unlike millions of others, instead working a minimum wage job for a few months until school started.

I mean they taxed over 30% of the money that was automatically put in a retirement fund (which I didn't want them to in the first place)

Stupidity shine:

I think late onset mental retardation should be replaced with “socialist.”

I thought about not saying a world and letting such phrase stand in all its glory but then, I felt the need to revisit and puke on all the oldies journals from an epoch which were the work of a popular movement:

Eugenics

Alain

Need I tell you all again to not feed the eugenicist troll?

Alain

At the time, despite having a Master of Science, I was pulling up dirty carpets and toilets out of apartments to eat.

Wouldn't your recommended free market solution to this complaint be "Moved elsewhere, where you wouldn't have had to pull up carpets and dirty toilets to eat"?

Are you talking about the Great Depression that was caused by government? How cute. Who better to fix a massive depression than the entity that caused the depression, right!?

There is no consensus about the causes of the Great Depression, whether it was caused by too much or too little government intervention. Trying to use this as an argument by citing an essay from a free market think tank is just silly. I could equally point at the Great Depression as an example of free market failure, suppoerted bt what I consider very convincing arguments from Keynesians.

Are you aware that most people regard your political position as the lunatic fringe? Libertarian candidates generally get less than 1% of the vote. If you are going to persuade people that you have something of value to offer politically you people need to do a lot better than these spittle-flecked rants, accusing people of lying and having "late onset mental retardation". I imagine Libertarianism has lost a great deal of respect from those following this thread.

Not just a troll, a really, really incompetent and stupid one.

Denice,

I didn’t realise that you had experienced financial difficulties firsthand as well as observing poverty from your travels and work as I did. I’m sorry to hear that.

Thanks, one of my friends once described me as the unluckiest person he ever met, and he had a point. I have kept quiet about it here but I still have health problems and I'm not working full-time, but things are much better than they were a few years ago. RI has been part of my rehabilitation.

Incidentally, I have always said I was happy for my taxes to go towards supporting the sick and the unemployed. I never expected to need such help myself; I spent my savings and dug myself into debt before swallowing my pride enough to ask for help.

Troll: Many posters on this site have developmentally disabled children/family members.

Would you believe that some of the people that commented on this thread have been diagnosed with ASDs/Asperger Syndrome?

You've been busted, Troll.

http://www.dailypaul.com/283240/delysids-guide-to-thinking-and-debating…

Oh and the government taxed over 30% of what I earned substite teaching

Your maths are as awful as your spelling. Your federal taxes don't hit 30% until you reach well over 100K in income. You didn't do that 'subtite' teaching. Also, the entire point of retirement accounts is that the money is put in *pre-tax*; it is not taxed. How can you expect to like or dislike something when you have no clue how it works?

instead working a minimum wage job for a few months

Lucky for you, the government instituted that minimum wage, of else you'd have been making much less. You might not have felt it was enough, but what do you think 'the market' would have really paid you for carpet tearing up abilities?

Listen, why bother with all of these pesky 'regulations' that are 'forcing' you to goto Dental School to practice dentistry? Why not just move the Chechnya where there aren't any strong government thugs to take all your money, and start pulling teeth right now? We will do without your 'million dollars in taxes' and believe me, you will not be missed.
I imagine Libertarianism has lost a great deal of respect from those following this thread.

Nope. Pretty much what you get anytime someone tries to defend it.

Stu: "Not just a troll, a really, really incompetent and stupid one."

Yeah. I just now skip his comments, especially after seeing that because the history is not how he thought it was that we are presenting revisionist history.

@Alain

I am not a "eugenicist." I in no way called for genetic cleansing of the population. I was referring to the quote

Any man who is not a socialist at age 20 has no heart.
Any man who is still a socialist at age 40 has no head.

Also it is a bit ridiculous to accuse me of being a troll on a thread that was about me.

@JGC

I took the job because I needed something for 3 months. It served its purpose. As a capitalist I moved on to other ventures when the contract ended. I only mentioned it because lilady was condescending me like I am some pampered rich kid.

@Krebiozen

Again you are spewing logical fallacies with X percentage agree with me and Y percentage do not. Being in the minority doesn't make libertarianism wrong. In fact it is the only consistent ethical political ideology.

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." Mark Twain

And I'm sure libertarianism lost a ton of respect because of that comment, as the radical socialists who infested this blog had such high regard for libertarianism before that. /s

Socialism is extremely offensive in practice. Describing socalists as having late-onset mental retardation is nothing compared to the destruction socialism does to society. It is an ideology of force and control and violence. What is more offensive than that?

@Krebiozen
Again you are spewing logical fallacies with X percentage agree with me and Y percentage do not. Being in the minority doesn’t make libertarianism wrong.

Wow, you completely failed to understand Krebiozen's point at #511.

@lilady

I don't doubt that readers here have family members with intellectual disabilities. I'm talking to several of them on this blog.

And you caught me. I made that thread mocking conspiracy theorists on the Daily Paul.

@passionless Drone

Welcome to the anti-libertarian circlejerk. I took that job knowing what the pay was. It was a temporary, seasonal job that was unskilled and brainless. They have no reason to pay any less than what people are willing to work for. Your liberal outrage is misplaced.

Perhaps you should direct your anger to the Federal Reserve, the institution that keeps the poor in poverty by constant devaluation of the dollar. It is pretty difficult to save capital when the Fed prints billions of dollars at will, inflating the price of goods and preventing savings.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2010/11/walter-e-williams/minimum-wage-maxim…

@Krebiozen and AdamG

HAHAHAHAH

I just realized something. "There is no consensus about the cause of the Great Depression." Weird! Most economists, including many Keynsian economists, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, are in consensus that the Federal Reserve played a role. Oh the irony of this!

@Krebiozen:

Personally I’m not convinced that unemployment is a bad thing. I would like to see more and more work done using technology and people to have more and more leisure time.

Hey, the IWW was on to the four-hour day a long time ago, if for somewhat different reasons.

@Narad

Let's just use tax dollars to pay union workers a living wage to dig holes, then pay them more money to fill those holes back up.

Isn't communist economics fun?

Democrats: The Republicans did it.
Republicans: The Democrats did it.

Libertarians: Never been allowed to do shit but supposedly would ruin the county if they were.

Get it?

I took the job because I needed something for 3 months. It served its purpose.

Then I fail to understand why you'd resent that you had to also pull up carpets and toilets to eat--you accepted the free-market evaluation of the skillset you possesed, the value your employers placed on your labor, and as you indicate in return you received an acceptable amount of recompense ("it served its purpose").

That said, can we return to the question I asked @480:
What would be the Libertarian or free market solution to the problem of single parents being unable to support themselves and their children?

Libertarians: Never been allowed to do shit but supposedly would ruin the county if they were.

If Libertarians present their philosophy and goals in the ways that you have, are you really surprised that this is the case?That's what Krebiozen was getting at in #511.

I will also be $330,000 in debt to trian in a profession that gives back to society more than any other- medicine dentistry.

FTFY. How you're going to be "giv[ing] back to society" remains thoroughly unclear, since you don't exactly seem like the type to go into underserved populations.

Anyway, how exactly is this not the market at work? UCLA currently comes in at $304,000 by their own estimate (I presume this is the nonresident cost); if you don't want to go someplace cheaper, such as Texas A&M's Baylor College, which was $113,957 in the 2010–2011 ADA survey, why are you touting the $330,000? Hell, why not tell everyone what the school is, so that your audience can get an idea of the admission standards of a very top tier school?

@Narad

Let’s just use tax dollars to pay union workers a living wage to dig holes, then pay them more money to fill those holes back up.

Isn’t communist economics fun?

I'm afraid you've amassed enough direct questions from me to not really be in a position to be grasping at my comments directed at others. However, even this feeble attempt on your part promptly collapses, as there's no reason for unions not to exist in your subsophomoric confection.

Funny how he can argue for a "hypothetical" over reality, without providing a single instance where said "hypothetical" was attempted and was proven to be successful.

Seems pretty stupid to me..

@Narad

Dentistry is medicine. Dentists aren't physcians, but they are doctors.

I'm assuming Narad that you are unaware that the mouth is part of the human body because you have an asshole at both ends of the GI tract.

I said I'm in Ohio. I'm sure you all with some light research one could figure out where I attend dental school.

By the way, I had a 23 (99th percentile) on my DAT and a 31S (85th percentile) on my MCAT, along with a 3.5 GPA in a Master of Science in the Biomedical Sciences. I got into medical school, too, and chose dentistry. I guarantee I have stronger science credentials than most of you here. Go ahead and go down that road.

When did I say there is no reasons for unions to exist? People should have the right to free association. But if a union member applied to work for me, I would just laugh.

It is pretty difficult to save capital when the Fed prints billions of dollars at will

It's also pretty hard to save capital when you make $1.50 an hour, but let me guess -- you don't give a crap about that, do you.

@Narad

You don't know me. You know the imaginary strawman you have created. You can use all of the obscure vocabulary you want, it doesn't change that your worldview is as primitive as it gets.

@JBC

For a 150 years a single working male could support an entire family. What changed?

The Federal Reserve ended the gold standard and gave us a totally fiat currency.

Once again, we are back to you having the burden of proof. Please tell me, how is a single parent suppose to support a family in this fiat currency system the government forced us into?

When did I say there is no reasons for unions to exist? People should have the right to free association. But if a union member applied to work for me, I would just laugh.

You're a miserable excuse for a human being. I wash my hands and feet of you. If it didn't hurt me or others I would love for you to open up your practice in a nice libertarian society and have someone open up a competing one next door -- someone without any education or certification, or $300,000 of debt, and charging half your prices.

JBC: Indentured servitude?

Well, it worked for the Puritans.

Frankly, my preferred mode of government is monarchy. I wonder if England would take us back. My personal opinion is that we need to cut back on the number of states if we want to have a functioning government.

@Stu

$1.50 an hour used to be an enormous wage. What happened? Why don't you explain to me WHY $1.50 an hour doesn't buy shit today?

Do you understand economics? Do you understand cause and effect? Or do you just have a primitive worldview in which you can only look at the present circumstances and give emotional opinions about it?

Delysid, do you understand the concept of the passage of time? Do you think the government has always existed? You aren't proposing anything new, everything you've suggested has been done before. The free market did not prevent poison from being sold as medicine, the free market did not get people livable wages, and the free market was in no small part responsible for the Great Chicago Fire.

"Libertarians are so selfish! They won't let me decide how their money is spent!"

Back on topic - I typed "anti vaccine people are" into Google & had some great auto-finishing come up......Looks like Google is definitely pro-vaccine.

@Gray Falcon

There is no such thing as a "living wage." That is a made-up, arbitrary term to incite as much emotion as possible. Progressives think with emotion and not logic and eat those types of phrases up.

You are right, I am not suggesting anything new, but

"Capitalism is relatively new in human history. Prior to capitalism, the way people amassed great wealth was by looting, plundering, and enslaving their fellow man. Capitalism made it possible to become wealthy by serving your fellow man." Walter E Williams

Please tell me what incentive someone has to sell poison. Why would a capitalist want to kill his customers? That seems pretty stupid, doesn't it?

If you are talking about herbal snake oil, then I would love to inform you that the government allows the selling of it. I'm not sure what point you thought you were making.

Also the Chicago Fire is the fault of the free-market? WTF? This passes for an argument? lol

@Delsyid - there have been numerous instances where "cost-benefit" analysis has allowed Corporate misdeeds to proliferate, because it was known that the "punishment" was less than what could be gained by the action.

Again, please point to where your theories have been put into practice and shown to be successful.

Also child labor is not necessarily a bad thing. Farm children all grow up as child laborers. This is why schools are not in session in the summer.

I'm a bit late, but wanted to address this -

One of my favorite web sites is http://www.shorpy.com/ The keepers of the site post high definition scans of old photographs from the Library of Congress, very lightly processed for contrast and tone. One of the taglines used is 'History in HD'.

If you go there, there is an 'About Shorpy' link. on the 'About' page are 3 photos of Shorpy Higginbotham. The first picture has the caption -

December 1910. "Shorpy Higginbotham, a 'greaser' on the tipple at Bessie Mine, of the Sloss-Sheffield Steel and Iron Co. in Alabama. Said he was 14 years old, but it is doubtful. Carries two heavy pails of grease, and is often in danger of being run over by the coal cars." Photograph and caption by Lewis Wickes Hine.

That photo has, at the top, a list of tags, and one is 'Lewis Hine'. Hine took a series of photos for the National Child Labor Commission. Clicking on that link takes you to pages of Hines' photos (not all of which deal with child labor).

But, just looking at the 'About Shorpy' page, I gotta ask...

Delysid, is this seriously something you want to see again? If not, who, if not the government, has the power to stop something like this?

@Narad

You don’t know me. You know the imaginary strawman you have created.

Really? What would that "strawman" be? Or have you failed to figure out what the word means?

What I know of you is your persona established here: one that either unable or unwilling to answer direct questions, plainly contradicts itself and then incredulously denies that it has, and fails to acknowledge when factual blunders are pointed out.

You can use all of the obscure vocabulary you want

What "obscure vocabulary" would that be?

it doesn’t change that your worldview is as primitive as it gets.

Oh, the delicious irony. Tell me what my worldview is, Carnac.

For a 150 years a single working male could support an entire family

When?

And you keep dodging our questions on how a libertarian society will care for the vulnerable.

damn that lack of preview function.

I guarantee I have stronger science credentials than most of you here. Go ahead and go down that road.

Ah, I knew we'd only get so far before Delysid stated whipping out his...credentials. You do know that it's impossible to know this for a fact, right? As someone who's been around this blog for quite a bit longer, I'm fairly certain you're dead wrong about this.

If you were a TA grading a student paper on climate science, and the best argument the paper could muster was that 'all attempts at modeling climate are inaccurate because models are complicated,' how would you grade that student?

"since you don’t exactly seem like the type to go into underserved populations"

@Johnny

Child labor is one of the most misrepresented historical issues. Many of the children in those heart-breaking photos were actually in orphans put to work by their government authorities.

Also many aspects of capitalism have changed today. We have a much better understanding of things like sanitation and the long-term health effects of pollution. Child labor today would not be the same today just as adult labor is not the same.

I recommend you please read this take on the situation.

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/child-labor-and-the-british-indus…

@Shay

I've posted multiple explanations of the free-market and poverty. Did you watch the Walter E Williams video? Or read the 2 essays?

http://www.lewrockwell.com/2012/10/walter-e-williams/poverty-nonsense/

Shay how is government stopping poverty? Is it working? As long as government promises to help fight povery, but fails at it, it's okay as long as they just try super-hard, rigth?

Has communist Cuba stopped poverty? How about communist China? Is there poverty in Sweden? How about France? Britain? Please explain to me what government does for poverty.

Socialism is extremely offensive in practice. Describing socalists as having late-onset mental retardation is nothing compared to the destruction socialism does to society. It is an ideology of force and control and violence.

You have no idea how utterly insane that sounds to most people living in Europe.

HAHAHAHAH

Are you quite all right?

I just realized something. “There is no consensus about the cause of the Great Depression.” Weird!

What's weird about that? It's perfectly true. The cause of the Great Depression is still one of the most argued about subjects in economics, even more so recently with the current recession.

Most economists, including many Keynsian economists, including the chairman of the Federal Reserve Ben Bernanke, are in consensus that the Federal Reserve played a role. Oh the irony of this!

Played a role? Of course it played a role. From a Keynesian perspective it failed to borrow enough money to keep the economy running during a recession and failed to regulate the banks properly. Or do you mean failing to leave the free market to its own devices? You seem to be on very thin ice accusing others of being intellectually challenged.

Ben Bernanke also suggested (PDF) that it was the banks and independent financial institutions reluctance to provide credit that contributed to the vicious downward cycle of the Great Depression, not the Federal Reserve. The same thing is happening now in the UK, with small businesses starved of credit leading to a stagnant economy. A free market isn't going to get a stagnant economy moving, though a good war might, sadly.

Making stuff up about history and economics might work on your usual libertarian territory, but it isn't going to work among people who have some knowledge of these areas.

@Krebiozem

A good war doesn't get the economy going. That is the broken window fallacy. There might be full employment as every works on making bombs, but who is growing the food? War in terrible for the economy (except the bankers who are financing the wars).

First of all, people need food and shelter to live, this is what a "living wage" refers to. Are you implying humans don't need to eat to live?
Secondly, capitalism may be relatively new, but it has been around, and it has caused it's own set of problems.
Thirdly, I'm not talking about herbal snake oil, I'm talking about heroin and cocaine. You seem to be under the impression that people are never self-serving and short-sighted.
Now, allow me to explain about the Great Chicago Fire. Before building codes came about, builders would make their constructions out of wood, which was what was cheapest. And they would build to the edge of their properties, which was most efficient. An entire city built like this was a fire hazard, and let to a large-scale demonstration of the concept of "The tragedy of the commons."

@Delsyid - ummm....WWII ring a bell? Did wonders for the US Economy.

There is no such thing as a “living wage.” That is a made-up, arbitrary term to incite as much emotion as possible.

Poe? Please. You've done enough. You can not possibly be serious.

@Lawrence

No, WWII was not good for the economy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=71tPBjrTeJU

Very first thing I found on Google for "living wage":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Living_wage

In public policy, a living wage is the minimum income necessary for a worker to meet needs considered basic. This is not necessarily the same as subsistence, which refers to a biological minimum, though the two terms are commonly confused. These needs include shelter (housing) and other incidentals such as clothing and nutrition.

Also interesting to note, Adam Smith argued in favor of living wages.

@Gray Falcon

Heroin? You mean diacetylmorpine? You mean the drug that metabolizes to morphine? You mean one of the most important chemicals ever discovered in medicine?

You mean cocaine? One of the first anesthetics?

Prohibition of these chemicals has caused way more problems than ever existed when they were legal.

Tragedy of commons is one of the reasons why socialism/communism fails. Tragedy of the commons is an issue of too little property rights.

Delysid, look up "Tragedy of the Commons", then comment on it.

Also, here's an article by an actual economist about World War II and economics, and not just some YouTube video:
http://eh.net/encyclopedia/article/tassava.WWII

Wow - that was the biggest piece of YouTube garbage I've seen in a while.....this guy is a loon & Delsyid is not too far behind. I am reminded of the Lindon LaRouche idiots who would come around campus.....since Del here can't seem to answer simple questions, I'm writing him off as a troll of the worst variety. Have fun guys - but I would just say ignore him...the great thing about these libertarians is that they can say all they want, but they'll never actual enact any sort of change.

I’ve posted multiple explanations of the free-market and poverty.

I just read the article about poverty which gives an account of how the US government has done with regard to poverty:

In less than two centuries, we became the world’s richest nation by a long shot. Americans who today are deemed poor by Census Bureau definitions have more material goods than middle-class people as recently as 60 years ago. [..] Again, the statement that “our society creates poverty” is just plain nonsense. [...]

It seems to me that this is a testament to how well the US government has done in looking after its citizens. Could do better? Of course, but it's done a great deal better than some other countries with similar resources.

The author (who is black) then goes on to explain that black people in America* are poorer than white people because of their poor decisions:

Is having babies without the benefit of marriage a bad decision, and is doing so likely to affect income? Are dropping out of school and participating in criminal activity bad decisions, and are they likely to have an effect on income? Finally, do people have free will and the capacity to make decisions, or is their behavior a result of instincts over which they have no control?

I think the author ignores historical factors that lead people to make these poor decisions. Anyway, that's another argument, but I'm having trouble seeing how this in any way supports libertarianism.

* I can't bring myself to use the term "African-American" as a blanket term for black-skinned people since many of my friends are black, from Ghana, Nigeria, Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados, Mauritius, Kenya, South Africa and other places. Obviously African-American doesn't work for them, but neither does African-British. I'll stick to "black" since they all seem comfortable with the word.

I read Delysid's cite @544, and I found it very long on assertion, but very short in the way of citations. One citation was a report from 1833 - 180 years ago.

The article seems to suggest that child labor was on the way out by the end of the 19th century, but for some reasonit was necessary to include in the Fair labor Standards Act in 1938 provisions including that "Children under eighteen cannot do certain dangerous jobs, and children under the age of sixteen cannot work during school hours."
Source -
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fair_Labor_Standards_Act

Why was that needed, you reckon?

Prohibition of these chemicals has caused way more problems than ever existed when they were legal.

I'm in favor of decriminalization of drugs, for various reasons, but I would tax them and use the proceeds for education and for rehabilitation of people with drug problems. I would also prohibit sale to minors. It's not a perfect solution but I think it would be better than the current situation with organized crime and zero quality control.
Presumably taxation of that sort would be unacceptable in a libertarian society. Who would persuade those selling heroin to pay a tax to the people organizing drug eduation and running rehab clinics? I wonder how the problems that are associated with drugs of abuse would be ameliorated.
If you think that putting addictive drugs on the free market wouldn't be a problem you might look at Japan after WW2 when vast amounts of amphetamines that had been intended for the miltary were released onto the general market. This led to widespread addiction and problems with organized crime that persist to this day. I believe something similar happened with heroin addicted GIs returning from Vietnam. Every society that methamphetamine is introduced to finds it becomes a problem. Even rats and mice will repeatedly dose themselves with these drugs until they die. How can a free market possibly deal with this?
The problem with addictive drugs is that they can lead people to behave in less than reasonable ways. Addiction is incompatible with the personal freedom and responsibility that are essential for libertarianism to work. How would you deal with this in your utopia dystopia?

@Krebiozen

Those studies about rats dosing themselves has been debunked. It was found out that rats kept in small cages with nothing else to do will dose themselves to death, but rats in large communities almost always turn down psychoactive drugs.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

@Krebiozen

Did you know that it is illegal in the United States to study DEA schedule 1 drugs for any postive benefits? The research regarding psychotropics has been undeniably one-sided for political reasons.

In Portugal they decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and addction rates have gone down. They are closing prisons because there aren't enough prisoners.

Child labor is one of the most misrepresented historical issues. [...] Also many aspects of capitalism have changed today. We have a much better understanding of things like sanitation and the long-term health effects of pollution. Child labor today would not be the same today just as adult labor is not the same.

I saw child labor in India in the late 80s, I took several overnight bus and train journeys and was shocked to see children of 5 or 6 years old boarding the bus/train at each stop selling snacks and drinks, at 3 or 4 in the morning. This is a modern country with nuclear weapons and a space program.

Even more disturbingly I was offered child prostitutes in both India and Egypt (You like little girls?", "No!", "Little boys?", "@!#%&!!!") .

Also indentured servitude is common in the developing world and is indistinguishable from slavery. I just don't see how fewer rules and less government as promoted by libertarianism would prevent the same things from happening in the US or Europe. Feel free to enlighten me.

@Krebiozen

India has had a socialist government for decades and a unique religion caste system. You cannot possibly blame libertarianism for the situation in India.

Until 1991, all Indian governments followed protectionist policies that were influenced by socialist economics. Widespread state intervention and regulation largely walled the economy off from the outside world. An acute balance of payments crisis in 1991 forced the nation to liberalise its economy;[207] since then it has slowly moved towards a free-market system[208][209] by emphasising both foreign trade and direct investment inflows.[210]

It takes time to recover from the destruction of socialism and a deeply entrenched racist culture. India is improving because it has been shifting towards more capitalism. It doesn't work overnight.

Even Somalia has drastically improved since the socialist governmetn collapsed. It's far from a utopia, but Somalia now is the best off it has been in 100 years in terms of telecommunications, the economy, and health care. (Though access to water is still a problem).

Delysid keeps answering my questions with questions. Why cant he provide an example of how a libertarian society cares for the vulnerable members?

@Shay

The question is unanswerable. I don't know why you don't understand. A libertarian society is not one unified bureacuracy. You are basicaly asking "how is a libertarian society going to become a cenrally planned society?" You are begging the question.

How are YOU going to help people in a free society? What are YOU personally going to do?

@Shay

People should give to charity. That is part of being an ethical person.

Capitalism in general continuously lifts people out of poverty. Competition produces excellence with lower prices and higher quality. A socialist would look at a soceity at a given moment and be outraged because the richest in society have more than the poor. A capitalist looks at the same situation and realizes that the poor have more than the richest people in society had a time before.

I've sent you several economists who have explained the same concept better than I have. I'm suspicious that you just ignored this. Are you sincerely asking or are you just begging the question and trying to confirm your own societal prejudices?

is capitalism humane?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FHPI1emZFVg

Also will someone please tell me how to format italics and links on this blog?

Why should we trust you, Delysid? We asked you serious questions about libertarianism and capitalism, and you failed to answer them. Frankly, your attitude towards law mirrors the mother in this story:
http://notalwaysright.com/taking-stupidity-to-new-heights-part-2/22450

@Delysid,

According to wikipedia (which isn't even a reference), rats didn't like the taste of morphine so they drank water. Beside, I've never seen a drug addict ingest morphine by the mouth and tasting it (pills notwithstanding, we don't taste pills but do I need to mention that?).

Alain

Delysid:

[i] text [/i] for italics, replace the square brackets with the less than and greater than signs.

If you want quote something at length, [blockquote] text [/blockquote] (same deal with replacing brackets with less than greater than signs)

[a href="URL"] text you want to use for link, or can be the URL even[/a] (same deal with replacing brackets with less than greater than signs)

Correction: This is the story I'm talking about:
http://notalwaysright.com/taking-stupidity-to-new-heights-part-3/29086
It never occurs to any libertarian rules exist for a reason.

@Narad

Dentistry is medicine. Dentists aren’t physcians, but they are doctors.

The latter is purely a matter of state law. In any event, dentists certainly don't have the same prescribing privileges as medical doctors, and those that "test it out" are likely to wind up with none at all. Nonetheless, I'm sure that this will comfort you while scraping teeth.

I’m assuming Narad that you are unaware that the mouth is part of the human body because you have an asshole at both ends of the GI tract.

Considering that I've treated you quite mildly, and certainly with more patience that you apparently deserve, this clumsy tantrum seems like a bit much. No doubt your chairside manner will be lovely. At least it'll be hard for people to point out flaws in your bizarre attempts at reasoning with your hands in their mouths.

I said I’m in Ohio. I’m sure you all with some light research one could figure out where I attend dental school.

You'll have to excuse my failing to notice that you had stuck this into the "location" box a couple of times. Indeed, I was largely ignoring this thread for most of its existence, until I wandered by and mentioned to no one in particular that the term "wealth" seems to be bandied about with no underlying definition to allow pronouncements about the rules that govern "it."

By the way, I had a 23 (99th percentile) on my DAT and a 31S (85th percentile) on my MCAT, along with a 3.5 GPA in a Master of Science in the Biomedical Sciences.

That's nice. I've scored an 800 on every section of the GRE, and the second attempt, a decade after the first, was just for fun, to keep a friend company. My preparation was exactly three vodka tonics. How's the air down there?

Protip: They're not intelligence tests, they're designed to measure the likelihood of first-year program success.

I got into medical school, too, and chose dentistry.

I'm sure your explanation of this will be fascinating. Was medical school a fallback plan in case you didn't get into dentistry?

I guarantee I have stronger science credentials than most of you here.

This is without question the most hilariously delusional item yet to spring from your keyboard. You have proved incapable of arguing your way out of a wet paper sack and demonstrate general ignorance every time you make the mistake of straying from vague pronouncements.

You are shockingly outclassed here in any branch of science, and probably in every effort of human endeavor aside from carpet and toilet removal, for which there's no particular reason to believe you were very good at anyway.

Go ahead and go down that road.

What "road" would that be? Eliciting demonstrations of your all-encompassing scientific prowess?

When did I say there is no reasons for unions to exist?

You clumsily mocked them as somehow equating to "communist economics" while apparently forgetting that you have effectively argued in favor of trade guilds in the case of medicine.

People should have the right to free association. But if a union member applied to work for me, I would just laugh.

I take it that failure to understand why this sentence is nonsensical on its face can be read as wholesale ignorance of labor law, to be added to your achievements.

Delysid,

Those studies about rats dosing themselves has been debunked.

That's interesting, thanks. it fits with some ideas I have about opiate addiction*. I don't think happy, emotionally fulfilled people get addicted to opiates, as much of the euphoria they induce in some people is due to relief of chronic emotional pain. I have little evidence for this, apart from the rarity of patients getting addicted to morphine in hospital settings.

However I see nothing about stimulant drugs like cocaine and amphetamines, which are the ones that rodents will dose themselves with until they die, or so I read several years ago (Goodman and Gilman: The Pharmacological Basis of Therapeutics IIRC).

It was found out that rats kept in small cages with nothing else to do will dose themselves to death, but rats in large communities almost always turn down psychoactive drugs.

Assuming this research holds up, is that true of all psychoactive drugs? I can find a study that found that miserable rats are more vulnerable to amphetamine addiction, but little else.

How is your libertarian society going to make sure its citizens are all happy and engaged in the community so they are not vulnerable to these drugs?

Did you know that it is illegal in the United States to study DEA schedule 1 drugs for any postive benefits? The research regarding psychotropics has been undeniably one-sided for political reasons.

I actually agree with you about something - I guessed from your 'nym that you shared some of my views in this area. Schedule 1 drugs have no positive benefits by definition, which is news to UK doctors who routinely use diacetylmorphine to treat acute pain in MI, for example. I think regulations have been loosened to some extent - for example I have a copy of Rick Strassman's 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule' sitting on my bookshelf next to me.

In Portugal they decriminalized all drugs, including cocaine and heroin, and addction rates have gone down. They are closing prisons because there aren’t enough prisoners.

Part of the deal is that those found in possession of these drugs are compelled to attend therapy sessions in one of 73 government-run clinics around the country. I think this kind of approach to drugs, along with abstinence, is the way to go, but I don't see it as a strong support for libertarianism.

* Some years ago I was going through a very stressful time - my son was having brain surgery, my wife was seeing another man, I had exams coming up at work - I was only 20 years old and was in state of serious anxiety. A friend gave me a benzodiazepine pill to calm me down, and I experienced absolute euphoria and the first decent night's sleep I had had in weeks.

Some months later, having recovered my usual state of calm in the face of the train wreck that passed for my life, I was offered another identical pill, and remembering the euphoria it induced before, I was tempted and I took it. It had almost no effect at all (so much for the placebo effect). That made me wonder about the effect of downers like this.

@ Krebiozen ( @ 513):

I'm glad to hear that you're doing better. Altho' you may think of RI as a means of rehabilitation, it's entirely possible that our collective ( heh) views your own contributions as similarly rehabilitative. Seriously, I think that I can say that..

I have so far been very fortunate, economically as well as healthwise ( knock on wood/ touch wood): but it's not something that any of us have control over - which makes much talk that opposes a safety net sound hollow and cavalier to me.

My cousin has recently had a run of horrible 'luck": since last October, she has requireded two surgeries to repair old muscle/ joint injuries ( no, she's not a professional athlete, she's an executive secretary), then she re-injured the repaired arm in work and now learns that she needs brain surgery to remove an ONS meningioma that is destroying her vision. I have spent the last 14 months 'talking her through' this series of catastrophes. She's divorced, lives alone and had to rely on a guy who lives next door to help her ( her son lives 100 miles away)- she's very independent and therefore feels absolutely miserable especially when she couldn' work at all.

Illness and injury happen and to believe yourself magickally protected against their occurence is similar to falling for woo that proclaims you cantotally prevent cancer or CVD by taking vitamins or eating a certain diet: it's denialism and whistling past the graveyard.

So please, keep up on your daily personal rehab and continue rehabbing the rest of us.

@Narad

Dentists do more surgery than most physicians. I give nerve blocks every day. We don't have the same prescribing privileges because, to quote you, "it's a matter of state law." I see you are as ignorant about dentistry as you are about economics.

Oh you got an 800 on the GRE? You must be so good at arithmetic and spelling tests!

Thanks Denice, it's very kind of you to say so. There's a whole long story I haven't told here about getting sick that eventually led me here, through some interesting experiences with both conventional and alternative medicine I have occasionally alluded to - it's amazing what you'll try if you are desperate enough! One day I'll relate more of my journey, but for now all I will say is I'm glad I made it here more or less intact.

Johnny: "The article seems to suggest that child labor was on the way out by the end of the 19th century, "

Hardly: http://www.historyplace.com/unitedstates/childlabor/

The question is unanswerable

Figured that.

Chris -

I believe we are in violent agreement.

See my post @540, Delysid's response (and link) @545, and then my post you quoted @558.

In case it isn't clear, let me say that child labor wasn't stopped because factory and mine owners hearts grew 3 sizes overnight. Child labor was halted because it was made illegal.

Exactly, Johnny. I kind of thought that Delysid needed more visual aids.

(also I am not reading his comments anymore)

I can only conclude that *nothing* would convince Delysid that climate change is real, no matter what, and that *nothing* would convince him that libertarianism is ever non-optimal.

In my view, that's the end of the issue, as you can't really have rational argumentation on those grounds.

It's a shame; there were at least a few things I'd agreed with him about.

@Khani

I thought I've been very clear that I don't believe that the climate is changing, I knw it s. The climate is always changng. I don't deny that humans have a certain degree of impact, as we inhabit the Earth. I believe thst the negative outcomes are not as certain as being projected and that they are being exaggerated for political reasons. I believe the raw numbers, but not the certainty of causee and effect and predictions of the models.

That wasn't the question I asked.

That wasn't the question I asked.

And I think it is time to ignore Delysid.

How come not one person has defended government?

Excuse me? Interrobang at #212 mentioned the Clean Air Act that stopped killer smogs. Orac at #260 mentioned that

Funny, then, isn’t it, how health care costs are equal or better quality at much lower cost in countries with universal health coverage

and universal healthcare programs are government run.
Old Rockin' Dave @ #314 gave a list of US Government achievements.
Chris @ #329 and #334 pointed out the government run GenBank and National Weather Service. At #477, I mentioned how Medicare and Medicaid allow people to have desperately needed operations that they otherwise couldn't afford, or that could bankrupt them. Grey Falcon @ #549 mentioned building codes.
Delysid is flat out lying when he says no-one has defended government. We can therefore conclude that he is acting in bad faith and should ignore him.

By pure chance I came across an interview with Gary Numan who I mentioned in passing above. It turns out he's one of those adults with an ASD (Asperger's in his case) that don't exist.

Shay: Why cant he provide an example of how a libertarian society cares for the vulnerable members?

Delysid:The question is unanswerable. I don’t know why you don’t understand. A libertarian society is not one unified bureacuracy. You are basicaly asking “how is a libertarian society going to become a cenrally planned society?”

So, given the claims inherent in Delysid's response in this exchange

1) Libertarian societies cannot become centrally planned societies
2) Caring for our most vulnerable members requires a centrally planned society
Therefore
3)Libertarian societiescan offer no solution to the problem of caring for their most vulnerable members.

I'd call that a clear loss for Liberatarian societies.

I suppose in a Libertarian society (is it a society at all?) the most vulnerable members are dependent of the goodwillingness of individual people.

I'm sorry, but I'm rather dependent of some government which isn't judgemental about my sexual oriëntation, the way I live, my past and everything else going on in my life, than from some goodwilling people, which might help me if I just be the way they want me to be.

Renate: clearly, you are not a member of the deserving poor.

The state riding herd on a citizen's sex habits, diet, smoking, etc is not ok, but individual donors doing so is fine because it is the donor's money. I think that would be the reasoning.

Delysid:The question is unanswerable. I don’t know why you don’t understand. A libertarian society is not one unified bureacuracy. You are basicaly asking “how is a libertarian society going to become a cenrally planned society?

Forget helping the needy, his society doesn't even have the means to create a police or fire department.

How are YOU going to help people in a free society? What are YOU personally going to do?

Start a revolution. Shouldn't be too hard, there would be plenty of serfs happy to fight for real freedom, rather than the despotic rule of the wealthy.

Renate: clearly, you are not a member of the deserving poor.

The state riding herd on a citizen’s sex habits, diet, smoking, etc is not ok, but individual donors doing so is fine because it is the donor’s money. I think that would be the reasoning.

In other words, the wealthy are given the authority to decide who gets to live and who doesn't. This "free society" looks an awful lot like feudalism.

Sign me up, GF. The spousal unit thinks I"m the reincarnation of Baron von Steuben, anyway.

I think I've beaten my example to death, but I was thinking of Delysid's challenge this morning (how are YOU going to help people in a free society?) and wondering.

How would I be able to provide more help to my colleague with my limited resources than she currently receives? I suppose I could take her into my home and provide her with food and clothing, but her medical bills would be out of my reach. And when I die (I estimate that I'm about 25-30 years older than she is), who will step in to help her?

Well, our resident libertarian seems to have disappeared for the moment. What seems to have happened?

Depends on what time zone he's in. For all we know, he's asleep or having dinner.

Feudalism is a mostly useless term to describe a caste system of slavery and monarchy.

A free society is one in which all human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights.

Your inalienable rights end where another's inalienable rights begin. This is the exact opposite of slavery. (and yes I am aware that some of the founding fathers owned slaves. This does not the principle wrong).

Delysid- When one person has control of the resources, they have power over others. In order for your free society to exist, we would have to become communists.

Grey Falcoln - Not that I agree with Delysid, but I'm not sure that follows. As my mother has always told me, "life is unfair". I cannot see that just because someone has control of one or more resources doesn't mean that the society is nominally free.

Mephistopheles O'Brien- Good point... Communism is a stretch. That said, anti-trust legislation has its purpose. Functionally, there's no difference between "Obey me or I shoot you" and "Obey me or you starve".

There's no reason to argue with Delysid; he's made it clear that no matter what happens, he will not change his opinion.

To me, refusing to put forth criteria for changing one's mind is a pretty clear indication there's no call for further ... talk, shall we say?

It's not an argument, as that implies some level of rational give-and-take, along with some room for shifting of viewpoints and changing of minds on either side.

It's a shame we didn't get a better libertarian to argue, as some of them do have some excellent ideas to offer a real discussion about politics.

Grey Falcon - can't argue with that. There's clearly a value (in my view) to anti-trust legislation and some worker protections.

Pity the poor bot...who keeps alerting her flying monkey squad with her daily "Media Updates, and who keeps posting her Spam.

Her good works have not gone unnoticed however, at AoA...

"Anne I don't know how you do it, day after day, week after week, year after year. You consistently leave comments on these pages and are often mocked & ridiculed. Thank you for not giving up the fight.

Posted by: ChrissyD | October 03, 2013 at 11:31 PM"

@Khani

A better libertarian. lol. Boos from the crowd is a sign that the visting team was the victor. It takes a mob of greater than 20 progressives to debate 1 libertarian.

"give and take"

How perfect for this blog. Giving and taking irrational socialist viewpoints with voluntaryism is like giving and taking alternative medicine with science-based medicine.

You failed to convince me of anything whatsoever and apparently I failed as well. Here is the tragedy- I live my life peacefully as an advocate for freedom and voluntarily relationships and you will use (or vote) for government to interfere, regulate, and tax me. Sadly in the eyes of the ignorant masses the latter is ethical.

Delysid - since you failed to convince anyone and nobody convinced you. Does that mean you agree with Khani? Just asking.

Yeah, sure, why not. To my knowledge a virulent socialist has never admitted to changing his position because of a superior argument on the spot. People's ideologies shift over a period of time after the debates in silence. I don't need my ego stroked with a "halleluah conversion" and it would be foolish to ever expect this.

I've gotten into heated arguments with progressives before, only to see them a year later posting libertarian arguments. Over the last few years I've had a bunch of friends, even some acquitances, tell me that I shaped their their political beliefs.

Libertarianism is the only philsophy that makes sense.

Delysid, many people are indeed speaking with you, and so it may have been easy to mistake me for one of the others.

If you go back and reread, however, you will find that I didn't try to convince you about climate change, nor about government. I made a few factual corrections to what people have said, but I don't have a strong emotional connection to current forms of government, nor to libertarianism, nor to socialism.

However, you have consistently refused to give any criteria to meet for what evidence would change your mind, either in the case of climate change or in the case of libertarianism.

That seems to indicate that *nothing* would change your mind on either point. No evidence, no reasoning, no science, no religion, no logic and no magic wand.

That's an irrational point of view, I'm afraid, and I'm really not much interested in discussing anything with those terms attached.

That would also go for anyone on the other side of these issues, mind you. For example, if someone arguing climate change was real refuses to give me a clear answer for "what would change your mind?" I would not be particularly interested in discussing the matter with that person either.

It's very difficult to defend the principles freedom on this blog. It's like I've been on trial against 20 prosecutors as my own lawyer.

My worldview took years to develop and countless of studying. Once you get it everything is interconnected.

Read Human Action.

http://mises.org/document/3250

Read Human Action.

Ah, that explains why you'll never be able to answer Khani's question.

[Praxeology's] statements and propositions are not derived from experience. They are, like those of logic and mathematics, a priori. They are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts.
--Von Mises, Human Action

Your worldview is a religion, Delysid.

Also, besides Human Action, I believe The Handbook of Human Ownership is a must-read.

http://media.freedomainradio.com/feed/handbook_human_ownership/FDR_Book…

@AdamG

Please explain to me how the praxeology approach to human action is religious.

o my knowledge a virulent socialist has never admitted to changing his position because of a superior argument on the spot. People's ideologies shift over a period of time after the debates in silence.

That's funny. I've never seen a virulent Libertarian ever admit to changing his position, ever. :-)

My worldview took years to develop and countless of studying. Once you get it everything is interconnected.

A JFK assassination conspiracy theorist or a 9/11 Truther couldn't have said it better. :-)

Did you know that it is illegal in the United States to study DEA schedule 1 drugs for any postive benefits?

Funny, I know someone who's been doing Schedule 1 research for over a decade, and there's a lab a mere 20 minute walk from me that's been doing it for far longer than that.

Once again, you're really better suited to vague platitudes, as factual statements seem to be like exploding cigars in your hands.

Orac nice red herring.

But since you mentioned it, I'm not a JFK conspiracy theorist but I have heard some intriguing and convincing arguments regarding it. Members of the CIA had very plausible motives for whacking Kennedy (Bay of Pigs humilation and him sleeping with some of their wives) and they certainly had the means to kill him. In the 50's and 60's those guys were literally disposing of leaders worldwide. Is it really crazy to suspect that they did it here?

9/11 truthers who do their investigating on Youtube are in whackjob land. That's a false equivalence.

I've changed my position regarding libertarianism before- in the direction towards anarcho-captialism.

Please explain to me how the praxeology approach to human action is religious.

I thought it was pretty obvious from the quote...Mises admits that Praxeology, like religion, is not falsifiable.

@Narad

Bullshit. Once a drug is classified as Class I and accused as having "no medical value" it then becomes illegal to study the drug for potential medical uses, blocking it indefinitely and arbitrarily from science.

The government grants special permission to some researchers to study schedule 1 drugs (most of which is proving harm) but it's few and far between and the results have never led to a drug being removed from schedule 1.

"For Schedule 1 drugs like marijuana, the vast majority of money for research comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “NIDA…has a CONGRESSIONAL MANDATE TO ONLY STUDY SUBSTANCES OF ABUSE AS SUBSTANCES OF ABUSE,” says Don Abrams, chief of hematology/oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco

http://mag.newsweek.com/2010/11/03/why-it-s-hard-to-do-marijuana-resear…

@AdamG

He says praxeology is a priori like those of mathematics and logic. How did you twist that around to religion? So you are saying mathematics is a religion?

Jesus Christ the confirmation bias around here is unbelievable. Everything about libertarianism gets twisted around to mean the opposite of what it is.

^ (And lest there be any question about "postive" research per se, it's trivial to find examples [one is sited in Israel].)

“For Schedule 1 drugs like marijuana, the vast majority of money for research comes from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA). “NIDA…has a CONGRESSIONAL MANDATE TO ONLY STUDY SUBSTANCES OF ABUSE AS SUBSTANCES OF ABUSE,”

I'm afraid that full caps don't salvage your actual assertion. Indeed, the quote itself makes matters even worse, but I'll have occasion to return to the underlying theme a bit later.

@Narad

I said it is illegal, by congressional mandate, to study substances of abuse for reasons other than substances of abuse. My statement for which you mocked me was a fact. The government is corrupt and massively hypocritical, so there are people who get special permission, but the law says it is illegal to study drugs for positive benefits.

I'd expect someone else to apologize and admit their mistake but based your demonstrated arrogance I expect you spout more irrelevant fallacies.

He says praxeology is a priori like those of mathematics and logic.

Well duh, yes of course that's what he says. Religious thinkers often say 'religion is beyond the realm of science.' Do you not see the parallel here?

My favorite arguments I hear attacking libertarianism posted from a satire site.

There are always going to be bad people, so we have to give tons of power to an institution bad people will constantly get into.

If you don't vote, you have no right to complain. If you do vote, the system represents you and you have no right to complain.

Libertarians hate government. Government=society and society=people and people is a superset of poor people. Ergo, selfish libertards hate poor people. QED.

Taxes are not Slavery, Wages are!

[CHECKMATE] There is no government on earth where libertarians are in charge. Therefore your ideas stink.

If you don't like it here, why don't you just move to Somalia?

Help! Lolbertards are forcing me to follow their beliefs of me not forcing my beliefs on them.

I care so much about the poor that I'm willing to make the ultimate sacrifice and give them your money.

It's immoral to earn too much but not to steal too much. lolbertarians are just too immature to understand morality.

Statist discovers one simple trick to win arguments! Lolbertarians hate him! (Somalia.jpg)

We need to give the government more control or the oil companies will take over. The only way to avoid having a small group of people having all the power is to give a different small group of people all the power.

Libertarianism is only for rich white people! Therefore it is only logical to always compare them to Somalians.

Posting things like that illustrates a refusal to genuinely engage.

But we knew you didn't want to genuinely engage as soon as you didn't answer my question.

Orac uses a similar question for antivaxxers, and I've noticed that like you, they may answer a lot of other questions and make a lot of other posts, they somehow never do get around to answering...

@AdamG

How is science going to predict my behavior?

The problem with Keynesianism is that logical positivism cannot predict or explain human action and empirical data itself is insufficient to describe economics, which in turn implies that empirical data cannot falsify economic theory and that logical positivism is not the proper method of conducting economic science

What is going to convince me that the alarmism doomsday scenarios predicted by the IPCC are undeniably true and that radical government intervention in the economy is going to solve the problem?

Nothing.

It's not the government's role to stop climate change. If people want to voluntarily take action against climate change with their own money, by all means they should be free to save the world.

Isn't libertarianism great? I won't stop you from doing what you think is necessary to save the world and you don't force me to pay or participate in your schemes. I have other ideas that I think will benefit mankind far more than global warming doomsday preperation. I won't force you into my plans.

Again, that wasn't the question.

The problem with Keynesianism is that logical positivism cannot predict or explain human action and empirical data itself is insufficient to describe economics, which in turn implies that empirical data cannot falsify economic theory and that logical positivism is not the proper method of conducting economic science

WOW you literally just copied and pasted that from wikipedia. What happened to the worldview that took 'countless studying?'

Yeah it was well said. Go ahead and dispute it with somethong better than hero a derp it's a religion.

What the fuck is the qurstion then?

There are always going to be bad people, so we have to give tons of power to an institution bad people will constantly get into.

LIbertarianism sounds like it might work on a planet full of reasonable, well-balanced, ethical, honest, altruistic people. Sadly, whether you like it or not, there are enough bad people in the world to badly screw things up for the rest of us. Equally sadly, people who seem reasonable are capable of acting in surprisingly selfish and unaltruistic ways. Any way of running society needs to take this into account.

For a fictional example I like Robert Anton Wilson's trilogy 'Schrödinger's Cat' which is set in three parallel universes. In one of these universes Barbara Marx Hubbard becomes president of Unistat (a fictional version of the USA), abolishes victimless crimes, makes crimes against property much less heinous than currently, and puts a force field around Mississippi (for years I have remembered this as Texas).

All the violent people who do not respond to psychotherapy and other behavior modification are sent to MIssissippi where they set up whatever form of government they wish, and John Wayne becomes their leader (IIRC, it's a long time since I read it). The rest are governed under more or less libertarian principals.

Without a similar real-life deus ex machina, I don't see how libertarianism could work. That doesn't even begin to look at how you might deal with unemployment, poverty, health provision, child care and education and all the other things that government deals with with varying degrees of success at present.

Democracy does at least attempt to keep bad people out of positions of power. Real life is messy, and there are no perfect solutions. As in alternative medicine if you think you have found a panacea you are almost certainly deceiving yourself.

Delysid

I’m not a JFK conspiracy theorist but

Please tell me this a Poe. I find it hard to believe anyone could be that lacking in self-awareness.

Orac, responding to Delysid:

My worldview took years to develop and countless of studying. Once you get it everything is interconnected.

A JFK assassination conspiracy theorist or a 9/11 Truther couldn’t have said it better. :-)

IANA Psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV, but Wikipedia says:

Ideas of reference and delusions of reference describes a phenomenon in which an individual holds a belief or perception that is irrelevant, unrelated or innocuous and assumes a connection to something else, on account of some special personal significance, that is otherwise unrelated. It is "the notion that everything one perceives in the world relates to one's own destiny."[1]

IANA Psychiatrist, nor do I play one on TV, but Wikipedia says... [ideas/delusions of reference]

Yes, he does seem to be rather smitten with the term "worldview." Moreover, because he is so fascinated with his own creation, he apparently comes to the conclusion that everybody else must have some corresponding mental construct and, naturally, that these psychic totems and comparison of their names (assigned by himself, of course) constitutes the totality of intellectual exchange.

It's like a game of Blind Man's Bluff that takes place between projections of plural minds onto some sort of hitherto underappreciated plane of existence. He surely doesn't conceive of it in these terms, but all the same, I'm hard-pressed to conclude anything other than that he's basically a very drab occultist who fancies himself the protagonist of some sort of inescapably metaphysical play.*

Delysid of course is almost certainly unaware of my time in the clergy, which is leading me to increasing amusement given his conduct and the allusory pseudonym. There's no telling whether serious construction on La Sagrada Paranoia had already commenced, but it seems safe to say that either way, it's likely that he's made the worst of it.

Now, the delusions of grandeur are writ large. Does someone have Beziehungswahn in his Weltanschauung? It strikes me as rather the opposite; the primitive superstructure arrived at after "countless of" internalizing aphorisms looks to be deployed to repress any such thing from getting anywhere in the vicinity.

It goes without saying that tat tvam asi is right out of the picture. Throw in a nonexistent grounding in the humanities, and one winds up with bizarre constructions such as "There is no such thing as a 'living wage.' That is a made-up, arbitrary term...."

"If not wise order, then a fiendish design," it's been said.

* Perhaps Situationism turned on its head; I'm well out of my
depth, though, as I only encountered it as synchronistic fruit while musing on the patient case at hand.

My worldview took years to develop and countless of studying. Once you get it everything is interconnected.

My own experience is more similar to the worldview of the characters in 'Gravity's Rainbow'. The more hours I study, the more my philosophy develops, the more obvious it is that things are not connected, and that apparent connections between one sphere of existence and another are random clang associations.

Delysid: Whoa, calm down there.
BTW, isn't it interesting that almost all libertarians are white males, who are certain, at least in their own minds, to come out on top? I've never met a female libertarian, probably because they realize that men have no incentive not to rape, pillage and imprison people if the rule of law were absent. I also find it interesting that libertarians tend to chafe at age of consent laws.

I said it is illegal, by congressional mandate, to study substances of abuse for reasons other than substances of abuse.

There is no need to try to polish the assertion, as it's sitting right there at #561.

My statement for which you mocked me was a fact.

Then how, exactly, the fυck is it that MAPS is currently sponsoring such trials in the U.S.?

I’d expect someone else to apologize and admit their mistake but based your demonstrated arrogance I expect you spout more irrelevant fallacies.

Tell everyone again about how Marie Curie worked from home. Mirrors aren't just for looking in people's mouths, cupcake.

Don't forget Ayn Rand. She wasn't really a libertarian, but those creepy rape fantasies fit right in with your hypothesis. Most of the libertarians I have encountered have been either potheads (male and female) or gun nuts (mostly male), for obvious reasons I think.

Don't forget about rich white kids, Krebiozen. In my experience wealth is almost always the driving factor behind the "I've got mine" mentality. Given that Delysid gets exasperated by the few months spent doing minimum wage work, I have a feeling that Delysid's household was not exactly struggling to get by.

Breaking my rule and engaging with the lying troll. I know I should know better.

You failed to convince me of anything whatsoever and apparently I failed as well.

Around here, people insist you back up your assertions with evidence. You have made several claims that could politely be called inaccurate. You have also admitted that nothing could convince you that AGW is real and potentially disastrous.

There are always going to be bad people, so we have to give tons of power to an institution bad people will constantly get into.

Ever heard the phrase "checks and balances"? Democracies have a lot of those. In South Africa, the government has lost a number of court cases. Recently, a prosecution that was abandoned on spurious grounds was reinstated. How would you prevent abuses of power in a libertarian society?

If you don’t vote, you have no right to complain. If you do vote, the system represents you and you have no right to complain.

What a strawman.

Libertarians hate government. Government=society and society=people and people is a superset of poor people. Ergo, selfish libertards hate poor people.

Another strawman.

If you don’t like it here, why don’t you just move to Somalia?

Somalia is a perfect example of what happens when government breaks down. The comment is a fair one.

We need to give the government more control or the oil companies will take over. The only way to avoid having a small group of people having all the power is to give a different small group of people all the power.

See my comment on checks and balances above. Also, politicians can be voted out of power if they are corrupt or incompetent. Businessmen can't.

It’s not the government’s role to stop climate change.

You have no idea how dead wrong you are. The main role of government is to protect the citizenry. If the effects of global warming turn out to be even half as bad as the scientists think, we are looking at hundreds of millions of deaths and vicious wars over resources. Under those circumstances, I would say government has an obligation to act.

Kreb: Oh, god, how could I forget Ayn Rand? One could write an entire dissertation about her psychological problems. I tried to read the Fountainhead once. I quit about midway through the first chapter because it was too creeptastic and appallingly written. I don't know what it was with her; self-hatred taken to the max, probably.

Potheads I can mildly excuse; most of them will probably shut up as marijauna creeps ever closer to becoming legal.

Kreb: Also, what do you mean she 'wasn't really a libertarian?

More "irrelevant fallacies." It's like shooting fish in a barrel.

The government is corrupt and massively hypocritical, so there are people who get special permission,

Oh, I see. Naturally, they picked this guy to get the keys to the MDMA cabinet.

but the law says it is illegal to study drugs for positive benefits.

Show me the statute, Perry Mason. NIDA's "mandate" is here.

It is truly mind-boggling that your reading skills are so poor that you can't even understand the quote that you're invoking for support. The National Institute on Drug Abuse doesn't fund studies looking for positive effects of drugs of abuse, so you conclude that all such studies are illegal, and the ones that plainly exist are explained as the result of weird and shadowy government machinations.

You're delusional. Perhaps it's time to examine the plausibility of your actually being in dental school.

PGP,

Also, what do you mean she ‘wasn’t really a libertarian?

She denounce libertarianism and described herself as a "radical for capitalism"; she was what libertarians call a minarchist, recognizing that we need some government but it should be kept to a minimum, a position I have some sympathy with. I can't find any sources for this apart from Wikipedia, but I have read this elsewhere too.

I tried (unsuccessfully) to read Ayn Rand's books. Her lasting claim to fame is her association with Alan Greenspan, the former director of the Federal Reserve. Greenspan has tried to rewrite the history of his tenure at the Federal Reserve:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alan_Greenspan

Thanks to Ginger Taylor's Twitter feed, we have this WHDT-9 interview with Mark Blaxill about the November, 2013 Vaccine Court Hearings. (I'm still waiting for Jennifer Larson to tell us when Congressman Darell Issa has scheduled those hearings).

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q37VyuC3zAY&feature=youtu.be

@PGP: can you PLEASE stop with the over-generalizations? I could introduce you to many men who have no desire to rape, pillage, and imprison. And many of them are white. Your hatred for men and disgust for most people is very sad. And it's a major reason I skip over almost all your comments, because I'm tired of finding the nuggets of gold amongst all the dross of hatred.

AdamG,

Don’t forget about rich white kids, Krebiozen.

Most of those I have met IRL were conservative Conservatives - I'm in the UK remember, and I haven't knowingly encountered many on line, probably because of the places I frequent. I have heard about the USian phenomenon of course, and I still think it's a sort of rebellion against the parents who I'm sure are mostly pillars of the right wing establishment.

MI Dawn,
I'm a white AngloSaxon Protestant (by birth) male. I'm trying to slowly convince PGP that black swans do exist.

I think it's a lost cause, Kreb.

Delysid @ some number less than infinity:

"I don’t deny that humans have a certain degree of impact, as we inhabit the Earth. I believe thst the negative outcomes are not as certain as being projected and that they are being exaggerated for political reasons. "

As a professor of astronomy and physics, I probably know a lot more practicing earth scientists than a random dentistry student I've also talked a lot to climatologists and atmospheric physicists, read a fair amount of the subject, and looked at state of the controversy from the inside.

And from that, I conclude that Delysid has been hornswoggled by the propaganda effort. The fact that we're in big trouble is not at all controversial among real experts. There is no controversy to speak of -- it's a classic manufactoversy, one of the best-crafted ever. The scientists ffreely admit that we don't know exactly how big the trouble is, but it easily could be very, very bad. A true conservative would heed this warning and insist on mitigation measures, because of the principle of caution.

But any mitigation measure requires some kind of worldwide orgranization, on a larger scale even than sovereign states. And that's anathema to a Libertarian. Therefore the problem cannot exist.

Delysid is reasoning from consequences -- he doesn't like the implications if this is true, so it can't be true. All his Libertarian buds agree with him, so that makes it final.

I harken back to the plot of "The Postman." At the end of the day, civilization wasn't destroyed by war or climate change, it was destroyed by the "survivalists" who attacked and destroyed anyone that attempted to "save or restore" what you and I would consider civil society.

As to Delsyid - he's not too far off.....

Delysid still hasn't explained how his "free society" would deal with a fire breaking out, especially if there were no fire code. It never occurs to him that rules exist for a reason other than being mean.

A few things:

Ideas of reference occur when a person has trouble differentiating what is happening on the outside vs on the inside of his or her head. Obviously, since all the world appears to swirl around us centrifugally, the sufferer thinks himself its axis without understanding that each other person also experiences a similar phenomenon. But then comprehending others' views is not their particular strong suit.

I also attempted to read Ayn Rand, The last sentence of the paragraph above ( possibly more) applies to Ms Rand also.

PGP, you need to meet different people, especially men, so you can learn which ones to avoid like the plague. Not all men are horrible, believe me, I have known, I mean, I am acquainted with quite a few normal ones who I don't want to scream at all of the time. I have a few who follow me around. They can be like slightly lost, over-sized children who are forever in need of assistance and encouragement. Really, they're frequently quite adorable. And useful.

Kreb, we both are what I call 'historically Christian" - that means that our families probably were so in the past. Us, not so much. We are therefore WAS

I encounter opportunistic libertarians amongt the woo-meisters and anti-vaxxers I survey- the philosophy is a good fit because they want to:
- earn money and not pay taxes
- not vaccinate their children
- provide ( quasi) medical services without governmental overview
- sell (quasi) medicines et al w/o governmental overview
- spread (quasi) medical information w/o governmental overview.

They despise services that would interfere with any part of their business or those which cost money and raise taxes.

Delysid's allusions to political ideologies in quasi-religious terms and to some sort of conversion struck me as interesting. For example:

Few claims make me laugh like “I used to be a libertarian and then I grew up.” That would mean that you recognized the failure of the state and the economics of free-markets, then went back and decided that the government is the solution again. This is about as likely as an atheist deciding that he is now a Young Earth Creationist. I don’t doubt that somewhere this has happened, but I have yet to ever see this kind of conversion.

As an aside, apparently atheists convert to creationism all the time, but even if true it's not really relevant.

What is relevant, I think, is that Delysid seems to have undergone something resembling a religious conversion, in which the scales fell from his eyes and he saw The Truth. How can anyone unsee The Truth? The Truth is so obvious that anyone who cannot see it must be brainwashed, unable to "even pretend to think outside of the circle", suffer from " late onset mental retardation", or have "an asshole at both ends of the GI tract".

This reminds me very strongly of the more extreme CAM attitudes to health. They paint a picture of a world in which eating the right foods, getting the right nutrients, thinking the right thoughts, avoiding toxins and medicines, especially vaccines, we will have perfect health. They even claim that diseases such as cancer can be cured in the same way. Why would anyone deny this? Anyone who does must want people to get sick and die, or they are being paid by Big Pharma to increase their profits.

They create an idyllic image of people in a natural state of health and well-being, and ask why anyone would want to pollute this with anything unnatural. Similarly Delysid paints a picture of human beings in a natural state of freedom and responsibility, exchanging goods and services in a free market, and asks why anyone would want to destroy this idyllic picture with a corrupt government that steals from us and imposes its will by force.

Who wouldn't want to live in a world where perfect health and longevity were guaranteed through a healthy lifestyle?

Who wouldn't want to live in a world where everyone voluntarily accepts personal freedom and responsibility and subscribes to a social contract, contributing willingly to a just and fair society?

The trouble is that neither the picture painted by the CAMsters nor that painted by Delysisd is rooted in reality.

We know what happens to people who don't have decent health care: we only have to look at the developed world historically, and the developing world and uninsured sick people in the US currently. CAMsters claim that poor hygiene and poor nutrition account for these examples, that disease was declining anyway and even deny, for example, that polio is being eliminated by medical science.

They pointedly ignore the very poor health seen in the Hunza, for example, still claiming that these and other indigenous peoples in remote areas are examples of extraordinary health and longevity. They ignore examples of people living 'in harmony with nature', like Native Americans, who died in their thousands when exposed to a 'harmless' disease like measles.

We also know what happens to large numbers of people without any overarching organization to govern them: we only have to look at the developed world historically and the developing world currently (and some areas of inner cities where the police are afraid to go).

Delysid states that, "The free-market is the activity that happens when it is not being centrally planned and controlled by government", yet we inevitably see chaos and rule by military dictatorship or organized criminals wherever such conditions arise. Delysid claims this is due to previous political systems or to religious beliefs, somehow failing to notice that every country on the planet has been influenced by previous political systems and a dominant religion.

It seems blindingly obvious to me that not all people behave as if they have personal freedom and responsibilities. Without this libertarianism fails, and since it has no means of compelling people to behave in this way I see no way it can succeed.

Those who support both these 'world views' fail to realize they are idealistic fantasies based on unrealistic ideas of what is possible in the real world. Both depend on ignoring swathes of history and an understanding of what happens without human inventions/interventions (whether medical or political). Both are rooted in a variety of naturalistic fallacy, claiming that humans do best when left to their own devices without interference from conventional medicine (and technology in general) in one 'world view', and without interference from government in the other. Both are equally deluded, in my opinion.

Delysid states that, “The free-market is the activity that happens when it is not being centrally planned and controlled by government”, yet we inevitably see chaos and rule by military dictatorship or organized criminals wherever such conditions arise.

One could make the argument that a completely free market demands a dictator or criminal overlord simply because it is so chaotic. Stability -- even if it's the wrong kind -- has a very high utility for the average person.

Curse you, lack of preview function.

I think that believing that people- without rules and regulations- would mostly act responsibily, is naive.

Like alt med wishful thinking about diet's effects, libertarian wishful thinking about markets can be tested. If a government cuts back on social ( or other) spending, the results can be monitored- thus if PM David gets his cuts or if Barry O orders spending ( which then gets cut), we can see what happens in the economy. Just like we can test woo-ful theories about diets or supplements.

I like to write about concepts like 'formal operational thought' and 'executive fxs" ( other stuff too, like metacognition, but I don't usually spell it out )- here's how developmental psych fits in here:
around adolescence, kids start thinking more hypothetically, abstractly and systematically- they can ask, "What if?" and then follow up the consequences of hypothesised changes. They are aware of combinational possibilities- which enables them to think like experimenters- if I vary A, I must keep B, C etc constant. This transformation also affects social thought, identiity and ideological leanings.

But they also- being able to abstract- become more idealistic- and, for lack of a better word- "puristic" - because they haven't yet allowed RL testing to sully their visions of perfection- they may become religious or follow a regime to improve themselves or an extreme philosphy. By interacting with others and testing out their ideas in the world, they learn to *qualify* their rigid idealism into a model that is more reflective of reality and human nature. They are naive scientists, who get less naive eventually. They learn that they are biased observers. Sometimes other events interfere with the development of these skills.

Thus when we talk about the formal operational thought of the adolescent - who is also studying algebra, science and social sciences- which occur as he or she acquires the many abilities** inherent in executive functioning which illustrate the *beginnings* of adult thought. Fully fledged executive functioning may not kick in ( if it does, indeed, kick in at all) for another 10 years or so ( related to brain changes). Remember all of those all old stories wherein the heiress doesn't get her money until she's 25 or the young duke can't marry until he's 30? Well, those who created the rules were being realistic about human development before we had studies to show how these abilities proceed.

If our friend Delysid is relatively young, I'd say give him time. For some of the successful politicians/ writers who speak similarly, I hope that what they say is merely a way to garner votes or sell books and isn't what they truly believe.

** judging self and others' skills, sarcasm, control of emotions, planning, subterfuge, predicting others' actions, assessing situations globally, etc etc etc

Shay,

Stability — even if it’s the wrong kind — has a very high utility for the average person.

Indeed - a retired criminal lawyer friend of mine was recently explaining to me that some crime has its benefits. Stability is one - the IRA did not tolerate drug dealing in Belfast (where heroin is still rare), for example, and it has been argued that the Kray twins "were guilty only of crimes against other criminals, and that the streets of the East End had been safe for women and children in their time"*. I have talked to elderly people who lived in the area who support this, claiming that burglaries were practically unknown back then.
I'm not entirely convinced, but it's an interesting perspective.

* Spiny Norman terrified burglars, apparently ;-)

I must add:
growing up involves learning to be able to see the world from the *perspective of another person* , be it purely physically ( Piaget's youngsters) or involving people in other social positions or eras of history, diplomatically or indeed, those who may only exist in imaginary realms.

Ideas of reference occur when a person has trouble differentiating what is happening on the outside vs on the inside of his or her head.

Far from "trouble," this can be a tremendous improvement. "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." An injury to one is an injury to all. Nansen saves the cat.

Obviously, since all the world appears to swirl around us centrifugally,

The fictitious centrifugal force causes things to move away. If things seem to be swirling, an ominous state of affairs, lying flat in a ditch or looking for a convenient fig tree, i.e., staying out of the way, are traditional.*

the sufferer thinks himself its axis without understanding that each other person also experiences a similar phenomenon.

It seems that ideas of reference are more likely to coexist with not just intact boundaries, but quite rigid ones, which is part of the problem. The television can't beam you "messages" unless they're coming from outside. Getting all swell-headed about it is not required, but probably the path of least effort for certain personality types.

Recognizing and interpreting ideas of reference as helpful commentaries on one's situation may not come easily if one is deeply mired in supernaturalism or monist materialism, but it's hard to see much utility coming from any other approach.

-----
* When not an option, even Poe suggests staying loose:

"I have already described the unnatural curiosity which had taken the place of my original terrors.... I now began to watch, with a strange interest, the numerous things that floated in our company. I must have been delirious – for I even sought amusement in speculating upon the relative velocities of their several descents toward the foam below. 'This fir tree,' I found myself at one time saying, 'will certainly be the next thing that takes the awful plunge and disappears'.... I no longer hesitated what to do. I resolved to lash myself securely to the water cask upon which I now held, to cut it loose from the counter, and to throw myself with it into the water."

(W—pedia suggests that this story is mentioned in Player Piano. As it happens, I learned yesterday that Vonnegut used to play at the bar that's now across the street from me.)

Dagnabit. Obvious blockquote fail I again hope is obvious.

I tried to read the Fountainhead once. I quit about midway through the first chapter because it was too creeptastic and appallingly written.

Obligatory reminder:
http://xkcd.com/1049/

And yes, I agree. More long-winded than Uris, less plot than Wolfe and less believable dialogue than Ludlum ALL ROLLED INTO ONE. The only reason one would ever, ever think Rand's books are not amongst the worst ever written is IF YOU HAVEN'T READ ANY OTHER ONES. For fuck's sake, Rand makes Hubbard seem riveting.

Few things are more pathetic than the spiteful hatred of the mob of limousine liberals, champagne socialists, Gauche caviar, who exhale their CO2 and fart their methane while pushing their authoritarianism, worshiping the State with the ferocity of Jihadists and passivity of serfs, completely oblivious of their own ignorance and destruction they are causing to mankind.

Delysid, you still haven't told us how your "free society" would deal with fire. As far as I can tell, everyone would burn to death, but by golly, they'd burn to death free!

I'm also curious how you'd suggest we deal with chemical, radioactive and, biohazardous waste in that completely unregulated world you're draming of, Delysid.

Or how we'd ensure we'd remain secure in our persons and property in the absence of police forces, courts to try violators, and prisons to secure them in while hopefully rehabilitating some portion of them.

Consider your example @ 393 of how the market creates wealth, involving fish, a spear, woven huts, etc. What happens if, instead of trading the fish Narad has caught with his captial (the spear he made) for the shelter representing Orac'scapital, Narad instead uses that spear to take Orac's hut by force?

How exactly would market forces act to either prevent that loss or to return Orac's capital to him?

It's possible Delysid is entertaining ideas about privatized police and fire departments. This opens up a whole new set of problems, as neither are likely to assist someone not able to afford their services. In a city with no fire codes, that would mean they wouldn't be much help at all if a building that couldn't afford service caught fire.

Also, I'm not wealthy, and neither are many of the commenters. We're not the rich trying to oppress the poor, we're the ordinary trying to avoid being oppress by the very rich.

@Gray Falcon

A fire department, court system, and sheriff would be the last functions of a government I would abolish, yet that seems to be the first thing statists cry about whenever questions the authority of the State. Look at the first things abolished by the Obama administration in the partial government shutdown- public parks, which don't even need bureaucracy to function to begin with.

Why wouldn't an insurance agency, in the lack of any other taxes, bring fire protection. Even in the current system in which we pay an upwards of 50% and higher of our total wealth to taxes, there are still volunteer firemen.

Police is a different issue because they enforce the laws of the State. I would abolish many of the existing laws against the State, like every single drug law.

Once again Delysid comes in here setting a bunch of strawmen on fire....always funny to see the person who decries "absolutes" arguing with nothing but absolutes....

Ever going to answer the question as to when your model society was attempted & it was successful?

Delysid, volunteer fireman don't get a salary but I hope you're not laboring under the delusion that they're free. There are equipment, facility, training and liability costs.

Why wouldn’t an insurance agency, in the lack of any other taxes, bring fire protection.

It's been tried. Competing fire companies did not always cooperate and split the money, nor did they always fairly compete to see who could arrive first. There is a reason that this was abandoned as a model.

there are still volunteer firemen

True, but they don't buy their own equipment (by and large) or water.

I would abolish many of the existing laws against [sic] the State, like every single drug law.

Would that include the laws requiring that medicines be proven to be safe and effective before a company could make marketing claims, or the ones that require them to be made by good manufacturing processes, or the ones that require them to contain what they say they contain and not be contaminated? Or were you just thinking of the laws governing the sale of recreational chemicals?

@ Delysid:

How about schools?
Are they the last to go as well?
Or.....

@Lawrence

I come in setting a bunch of strawmen on fire? LMFAO I didn't know you were so funny! You mean strawmen like "we are all gong to die in the streets and our homes are going to burn to the ground in a libertarian government?"

At least 5 differerent people attacked Ayn Rand, who despised libertarians, like she fucking matters about anything.

People in this thread got knocked out by their own libertarian strawmen.

@Shay

You aren't even trying to undrestand the difference between force by government and voluntaryism in the market. Do you think the current system is free? People are paying for it, only they have little control over costs because it is taken from they by force from the State. We already have systems in place, like Homeowner's Insurance, to cover such things as fire damage. I realize people like you have difficulty imagining it any way other than "if the government doesn't do it it can't happen because I have zero creativity or abstract thought ability," but all you have to do is look at the current system minus the State's role to see how it would work. It would work the same, minus the massive, incompetant, violent government bucreacracy to waste money that should go directly to fire protection.

Delysid, the fact that you would even consider abolishing the fire department, court system, and sheriff shows exactly how little you understand.

Consider the following: A building, as well as all of the others in a five-block radius are built entirely out of wood, out to the edges of their property. Also, almost none of the buildings have bothered to put in fire suppression systems or fire escapes, which the builder thought was too expensive. Many of the buildings have not bought insurance, so the insurance company will not send a fire truck out to them. Finally, a fire breaks out in one of the uninsured buildings with neither fire escape nor extinguishers. What is to prevent the whole area from turning into a singular inferno?

@Lawrence

Seriously how do you wipe your own ass? How do you buy toilet people without merchant taking all of your money? How do make any decisions on your own in the market? How are you smart enough to buy soft toilet paper and not sand paper? How do you manage to not drown in the toilet without a government bureaucrat mointoring your bathroom safety? Does a government agent come to the public housing where you live and change your diapers for you?

Are you totally dependent on government for every aspect of your life?

How do you think a free society would work? Exactly like it does now.

WITHOUT SLAVES WHO WOULD PICK THE COTTON?

Once again Delysid comes in here setting a bunch of strawmen on fire

Good thing there are plenty of volunteer firemen to available to extinguish them.

I am old enough to remember when ambulance services were provided by private enterprise in most of Canada and the US. Nobody in the field of emergency medicine or in their right mind is arguing that a return to this is a good idea.

Delysid, there are numbers besides zero and infinity. There are forms of government besides anarchy and fascism. We aren't totally dependent on government, but it is necessary for civilization to exist. I am not speaking of abstract principles, I am talking about the real world, a world where fire and crime exist, and where deceivers will sell out the planet for a dollar. You are not demanding the wicked lose power, you are demanding the just embrace impotence.

To clarify my last comment, I am not saying everything that the government does is right, or that there are no excesses that need correcting. The fact that Delysid believes this to be the case suggests he has the maturity of a small child.

@Gray - he doesn't seem to have a concept of anything other than his own little world - as hypothetical as it is...since he can't point to a single instance of it having been tried and successful.

He's just assuming that everything would work out the way he claims (despite the entirety of human history telling us otherwise), not exactly an educated fellow.

And I'll sit back and wait for the absolutist insults to continue, absolutely....

@Gray Falcon

You just did the argument to moderation logical fallacy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation

Tell me then, what is the right amount of socialism? The amount YOU say is the right amount? Everyone who wants less socialism than you is immoral and crazy?

"Maturity of a small child."

At least I intellect and the ability to think rationally. You are spouting off one logical fallacy after another. This is just another ad hominum attack. I would be a lot more "mature" in this debate if I was so fucking frustrated how ignorant people are being to their own ignorance.

@Lawrence

Answer my question. How do you wipe your own ass? What toilet paper do you use? Does the governmetn issue your toilet paper to you.

I demand an answer to how you wipe your own ass.

I'm not claiming to know how, in the even the government starting giving us toilet paper and wiping our asses for us, how in a free society you will wipe your ass.

LOL - right on cue.

I didn't realize that my original question was going to be so hard for Delsyid to answer....insults are definitely the last refuge of the hopeless.

Tell me.

If toilet paper become socialized, then the government shut down, how would you wipe your ass?

Would it be CHAOS? Would robber barons charge exorbitant prices for toilet paper? Would gangs and warlords fight over the toilet paper industry? Would you just wipe your ass with sand paper? Or poison ivy?

Go ahead. I'm waiting for your highly educated answer.

@EVERYONE

This conversation is done for every other topic until I recieve an answer from Lawrence regarding the wiping his ass dilemma.

Delysid, you don't have any authority to decide what topic is open. Especially when it's obvious you have the maturity of a ten-year-old. We asked you serious questions about how your theoretical society would function in the real world. You respond with scatological insults. Do you really think you impressed anyone?

@Gray Falcon

Why don't you answer it then. Step in for Lawrence. I'm suspicious that you are smarter than him, so why don't you explain to me how wiping our asses would work in a free society? This issue is identical to any other dilemma being proposed.

How would [medicine] work in a free society? How would [fire protection] work in a free society? How would [wiping our own asses] work in a free society?

@Gray - people like him are never interested in a real discussion. I believe a number of very good questions were posed to Delsyid, asking him to provide at least some measure of empirical evidence to support his contention that his "worldview hypothesis" was indeed the correct one & would operate according to his descriptions - in the face of the very real challenges that societies have struggled with since the beginning of human civilization.

Since he had & has no intention of engaging in a rational discussion and has gone down the typical "troll" descent into simple insults, it's time to ignore this particular odious individual.

But hey, I've annoyed him enough to become a personal target of his idiotic rants - so I guess that counts for something.

"Without slaves, who would pick the cotton?"

First, it was the ex-planters and their families. And then, when that labor was insufficient, they hired their former slaves and their families as sharecroppers.

And all were equal (but not so equal) in poverty and misery....

And as for if TP became socialized, well, there's always other stuff to wipe oneself with, namely things like leaves, corncobs, and catalog pages. You know, things people wiped themselves with before there was TP.

Hope y'all enoyed my little foray into the history of hygiene....

I'll get the popcorn to watch the delysid show.

Looks like to me, and to every political poll, that the Randians, the Tea Party and the Republican Party have overplayed their hand and the ACA implementation will not be delayed.

@Lawrence

I see you haven't answered the question yet. This was a very good question posed to you.

You know toilet paper was an important commodity in the Soviet Union, right? You know that toilet paper is a problem in the non-tourist areas of Cuba?

Know you are upset about me, the only libertarian on this thread, addressing you directly, while you have over a dozen people in a mob against me? HA!

How many socialists does it take to defeat a libertarian in a debate?

Answer: I don't know, but way more than the number of peopel who read this blog.

If you can't tell the difference between "I don't have enough toilet paper!" and "Somebody just cut off my arm!", you should seriously consider psychiatric help.

@Lucario

So if toilet paper became socialized, would that mean that libertarians would be accused of wanting the people to use corncobs to wipe asses?

Because that is exactly how every other issue is being treated. Right now in the free market you can go into a grocery store and choose from about 50 brands of toilet paper in a wide range of prices and quality, whatever your butt desires. It's not a mystery about how to wipe our ass because the market has delivered.

For some reason socialists cannot (or will not) apply this logic to other issues. If a libertarian is opposed to socialized toilet paper, in the eyes of the socialist, he must want people to wipe their ass with corncobs.

@Gray Falcon

"Somebody just cut off my arm."

You think that counts as a rational argument, and I'm the one who needs psychiatric help?! LMFAO

You need to take a logic course.

MIT offers them for free. Isn't the market awesome?

Upset? Too funny.

Maybe one day you'll get some sort of clue.

This thread's getting so long, it's getting "Unable to allocate memory for pool" errors on my computer. Time to lock?

@lilady

Because Ayn Rand and I are literally the same person. Republicans are all the same, and they are all literally Ayn Rand. The Tea Party is literally a cult that worships Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand. Ayn Rand.

Progressivism: "I hate Ayn Rand so much that I talk about her more than every libertarian and Republican combined. Also, I've never actually read one of her books, but I hate her because I've read opinion articles by other people who might have read her books."

I've read (actually tried to read), Ayn Rand's books. Did you happen to read my post about Alan Greenspan (a Randian economist), who drove the economy off the rails and has spent his years since leaving the Federal Reserve, attempting to rewrite history?

How every one of those political polls? Did you spend some time reading how your Libertarian fellow travelers...the Randians, the Tea Party and the Republicans have fared, since they tried to blackmail The President?

LOL...we're not laughing with you, Delysid.

Wealthy international corporations pay laborers in sweat shops in Bangladesh, for example, so little they can barely afford food, much less a luxury like toilet paper*, and this in a free market.

Why would things be any different in the US without labor laws and a minimum wage, especially if there are employers like Delysid who wouldn't tolerate trade unions?

* Don't believe me? Check out prices in Bangladesh and see how far the minimum wage of $40 per month gets you.

@lilday

I despise Alan Greenspan. He was the worst chairman of the Fed (besides Bernanke) by far in the last 40 years. He kept interest rates way too low for too long. What does this have anything to do with Ayn Rand?

You have no idea what you are talking about. I imagine you are laughing at me because smart people sound like crazy people to dumb people.

I imagine you are laughing at me because smart people sound like crazy people to dumb people.

I imagine all sorts of things, but I try not to make the mistake of thinking that they are necessarily true.

Delysid, I live in the country. We have a volunteer FD. Let me explain to you how that works.

The Village of A, with no organic firefighting capability has three choices.

1). Build a firehouse, buy equipment, and hire sufficient full-time firefighters to provide 24/7 coverage for the village. This is paid for by taxes levied on A residents.

2). Contract the service out to a neighboring jurisdiction that does have a fire department. This is paid for by taxes levied on A residents.

3). Build a firehouse, purchase equipment, and train enough volunteer firefighters to be able to respond 24/7. Provide the volunteers with training, insurance, and equipment. This is paid for by taxes levied on A residents.

Our village, like most small country jurisdictions, has option #3. Our volunteer firefighters are not "free." They're cheaper than the other two alternatives, but they still have to be paid. Most jurisdictions including ours offer to cover missed work time if an alarm goes off in the middle of somebody's work-day.

Also, anyone who thinks homeowners' insurance is a replacement for firefighters hasn't thought that one out. Insurance covers your house when it's gone.

Firefighters try to stop your house from going.

@Krebiozen

Bangladesh is not in the current state because of wealthy corporations. That is a ridiculous confirmation bias and misapplying cause and effect.

Corporations help 3rd world countries. If Western corproations did not build factories, then what would those people have? Where would they work? Would they be better off? Give me a break. You are taking a snapshot and time and going "capitalism caused this."

No. Again, socialists never blame socialism for the problems it causes. Everytime the state is the problem statists call for a more powerful state.

Capitalism is bringing those countries out of poverty. Bangladesh has been ruled by socialists since 1949 with the Awami League.

@Krebiozen

Bangladesh is not in the current state because of wealthy corporations. That is a ridiculous confirmation bias and misapplying cause and effect.

Corporations help 3rd world countries. If Western corproations did not build factories, then what would those people have? Where would they work? Would they be better off? Give me a break. You are taking a snapshot and time and going "capitalism caused this."

No. Again, socialists never blame socialism for the problems it causes. Everytime the state is the problem statists call for a more powerful state.

Capitalism is bringing those countries out of poverty. Bangladesh has been ruled by socialists since 1949 with the Awami League.

Corporations help third world countries.

Oh my goodness, you are funny.

Delysid, ever hear of the Gish Gallop? It works better in live formats.

@Mewens

You mean like how everyone here is debating me? Rapidly switching from fires, to Alan Greenspan and Ayn Rand, to Bangladesh?

Socialists are the fraternal twins of medicine quacks. This blog alone has provided enough evidence of this for this to be called "Delysid's law."

@EVERYONE

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/venezuela-orders-temporary-takeover-toilet-pap…

I noticed that nobody has bother to answer my question about how you all would wipe your asses in the event of a privatization after a socialization of toilet paper.

The socialist paradise of Venezuela seems to be screwing up the ass wiping pretty badly. Anybody care to come to their defense?

http://ca.news.yahoo.com/venezuela-orders-temporary-takeover-toilet-pap…

Ha ha ha, you have heard of it, then. Do you see it at most sites you go to? I bet you do, right? You probably see plenty of socialists everywhere, too, right?

But I'll offer my own law: There's a direct relationship between a forum arguer's zealousness and the likelihood that he or she will be mistaken for a common forum troll. (I won't name that law after myself, though.)

@Krebiozen

Apparently there is a book called "Clamoring For Free Market Freedom in Banbladesh" by a Bangladeshi economist named Nizam Ahmad. Perhaps you should read his book since you are so interested in free-markets and Bangladesh.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Making_Our_Economy_Right

@Mewens

How can I troll a blog in which I have never commented before in a thread that was literally about me by answering questions that asked directly to me?

Please I would love to hear the answer to this, as you are not the first person in this thread to accuse me of being a troll.

And that's exactly the point I'm trying to make – you're constantly reading into other's words, and you're constantly responding to arguments others aren't making.

No one begrudges you your beliefs; they're irritated by how you're putting words in their mouths and how you refuse to own up to your factual inaccuracies. I didn't say you were a troll – though I did strongly imply that your behavior was indistinguishable from a troll's to an outside observer.

If you can't see how it might generate ill will by calling everyone who disagrees with you a "socialist," when you respond to disagreement with insults, when you insist on making black-or-white statements, you're to look like a fool. (Perfect example: Wiping your rear has neither the moral nor the economic implications that fire safety has. When you make that comparison, everyone else has to decide if you're stupid or if you're playing stupid to get a rise out of them.)

You had, in fact, flounced off this blog, Delysid. Why don't you stick the flounce?

What type of anarchist are you?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy

Why don't you just leave and go to Somalia where you won't have to be bothered with the social contract to pay your dues (taxes), for the infrastructure, municipal, State and Federal services you enjoy.

You do know, don't you, that Federal aid to universities, as well as those low cost student loans that you have, will suffer once the Libertarians, the Randians, The Tea Party and the Republicans force the United States into defaulting on the National debt on October 17th? (Your student loan interest rates are pegged to Treasury Notes and T-Bills).

There's always pulling up rugs and pulling up toilets for you to earn some money.

I'm either a minarchist for a nightwatchman state or an anarcho-capitalist, depending on my mood. personally I think that a Nightwatchman State and stateless society become functionally indistinguishable from each other once a state becomes small enough and that a population of a certain size will always insist on some type of state, kind of like a limit in calculus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarcho-capitalism

Delysid,
I have been presenting to you some of the real world problems that led me to abandon libertarianism, when I was about 25. I am curious to see if you have any solutions to them that are compatible with libertarianism.

Bangladesh is not in the current state because of wealthy corporations. That is a ridiculous confirmation bias and misapplying cause and effect.

How do you manage to misunderstand so much, so profoundly? I wasn't suggesting that Bangladesh is in its current state because of wealthy corporations. I was giving an example of a labor market that is poorly controlled, for various reasons, and that has a very low minimum wage. Large corporations (more accurately their suppliers) take advantage of this cheap labor, because they can. Why else do you think Walmart, Gap and H&M, for example, source their goods there?

Even when consumers put pressure on them to behave more ethically, corporations don't always respond as one might expect. H&M, for example, has responded to criticism by calling for the Bangladeshi government to raise the minimum wage, which kind of misses the point.

I was asking you what would stop these same wealthy corporations from exploiting people in a libertarian USA. Why would they offer Americans in a libertarian USA that had no trade unions and no minimum wage a higher wage than they currently offer Bangladeshis? It's a simple question.

Corporations help 3rd world countries. If Western corproations did not build factories, then what would those people have? Where would they work? Would they be better off? Give me a break. You are taking a snapshot and time and going “capitalism caused this.”

That's just a straw man, I'm not claiming that capitalism caused anything. In fact I agree that poorer countries are probably better off because of corporations. That doesn't mean that I think it is ethical for them to pay a wage that it is impossible to live on, just so people in the US and Europe can buy cheap clothing or food. Did you see how much a 1 bedroom flat, a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk costs compared to the $40 per month minimum wage in Bangladesh?

No. Again, socialists never blame socialism for the problems it causes. Everytime the state is the problem statists call for a more powerful state.

Another straw man. I am asking you how you think having no minimum wage, no laws stipulating pay and conditions for workers and no trade unions would improve anything anywhere, not just in Bangladesh. I would love to see a solution that didn't involve state intervention, but I can't find one.

How would a free market lead to a fair wage, when we can look at present day examples of exploitation wherever employers can get away with it? Even if some employers are ethical, how can they compete with those that aren't and that can offer cheaper goods produced by slave labor in seat shops? I don't get it, but I assume that you must have an answer, since you have spent so much time reading and thinking about this.

Capitalism is bringing those countries out of poverty.

Good, let's hope they succeed before Bangladesh disappears underwater due to AGW.

Bangladesh has been ruled by socialists since 1949 with the Awami League.

I'm pretty sure Bangladesh's problems have more to do with history and natural resources than the kind of government they have.

Delysid, try to argue with us, not the people you think we are. Many of us aren't socialists, we just consider your ideas to be unworkable. I know you think the only people who would disagree with you are socialists, but you're dead wrong. If your ideas were so self-evident, why has nobody spoken in your defense?

Delysid, could you at least attempt to explain how your unregulated free market society would deal with the problems posed by the generation of chemical, radioactive and bio-hazardous waste?

#707 It's you who keeps switching tracks. Admittedly you are being provided many of them by the numerous people who are arguing with you, but you do decide which to respond to.

Frankly, I thought this "discussion" was over the moment you refused to respond to my questions. Generally that's all people need to know before they stop bothering to have a rational discussion.

Delysid @703:

Bangladesh is not in the current state because of wealthy corporations.

That's not our point. Our point is, without government to enforce laws, what's stopping the corporations from exploiting their employees even more than they are now? What's stopping them from polluting the environment?
I'm going to repeat what others have said. You seem to think that corporations and people will behave ethically in the absence of government. Bring some evidence that the strong won't exploit the weak.

@Gray Falcon

Also interesting to note, Adam Smith argued in favor of living wages.

As someone once said on Pharyngula when someone quoted Adam Smith saying something that was contrary to glibertarianism "Adam Smith it like the bible you are supposed to worship it, not read it." Free market fundamentalists are like religious fundamentalists.

Delysid, try to argue with us, not the people you think we are. Many of us aren’t socialists, we just consider your ideas to be unworkable.

A socialist is defined as someone who disagrees with Delysid.

When a large natural gas reservoir containing a lot of liquid hydrocarbons in a vapour phase was discovered in Turner Valley in the 20s, the unregulated freed market response was to flare the gas and sell the liquids until the Provincial Government stepped in to force the oil companies to conserve the gas. I would like Delysid to explain why such regulation decreased wealth produced from this retrograde condensate reservoir.

Any one thinks private business are bastions of efficiency has never worked for one or is blinded by ideology.

I will wager 100 quatloos that Delysid is a Mensa member.

"Bangladesh is not in the current state because of wealthy corporations."

As if on cue...from my Firefox browser's "Latest Headlines"

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-24453165

8 October 2013 Last updated at 21:27 ET

Bangladesh clothing factory hit by deadly fire

Emily Thomas reports on the latest disaster in Bangladesh's garment factories

At least nine people have been killed in a fire at a clothing factory near the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, emergency officials say.

Local media said about 50 people had been hurt in the fire, which broke out late on Tuesday in Gazipur.

It was feared the number of people killed could rise.

Safety standards in Bangladesh's garment factories are notoriously poor. More than 1,100 people died in April when a factory outside Dhaka collapsed.

Another 2,500 people were injured in the disaster in the Ashulia district on the outskirts of the capital, where most of the clothing industry is based.

Last November, 112 workers were killed in a fire at another clothes factory in the area.

The cause of the latest fire was not immediately clear, but reports said it broke out at a knitting section of Aswad Composite Mills.

A local official at the scene said that fire fighters had been unable to recover any bodies.

One man came to the site to find his uncle told the BBC that he had not been able to find him.

"I found out that the fire started from a [textile] machine," he said. "When the silencer of the machine exploded, the fire spread and the factory caught fire.

"Immediately after the fire many people ran out of the factory but a few could not get out."

Reports quoted officials saying water shortages and a lack of nearby fire stations had allowed the blaze to escalate and continue for several hours.

Factory Director Emdad Hossain told the Daily Star in Bangladesh that 170 workers were on duty on the two floors when the fire broke out.

"Almost all of them managed to come out of the building," he said.

Mr Hossain suffered injuries while rushing out of the building.

Although most members of a reported workforce of 3,000 had left the building for the day, those killed are thought to have been working overtime.

District administrator Dilruba Khanom said that emergency services were waiting until sunrise to complete their search of the factory. They warned that the number of casualties could rise.

"They have managed to control the fire in most parts of the factory, but the warehouse is still burning," he said. "The bodies are charred beyond recognition."

Police officer Ameer Hossain told the Daily Star that nine bodies had been recovered. Other accounts put the toll at 10.

Clothing makes up around three-quarters of Bangladesh's total exports, and the factory collapse prompted protests and calls for improved safety measures.

Dozens of international retailers agreed a plan last July to conduct inspections at factories from which their goods were sourced.

Related Stories

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22 SEPTEMBER 2013, BUSINESS

Dhaka factory collapse missing 'not dead'
16 SEPTEMBER 2013, MAGAZINE

US retail in Bangladesh safety move
10 JULY 2013, BUSINESS

Retailers to check Bangladesh units
08 JULY 2013, BUSINESS

Dhaka collapse probe uncovers abuses
23 MAY 2013, ASIA

@Khani

I have tried to answer your questions directly. From what I understand you are asking me " what would it take to change my mind about libertarianism?" And "what would it take me to change my mind about AGW?"

Those are are 2 different answers. The AGW part I answered in another comment.

You won't change my mind about libertarianism with "evidence" because I don't view politics as a science. I wish you would please read Human Action to understand why I think this way.

Even if socialism worked perfectly for every single person (which of course it does not) I would still oppose it on ethical grounds.

Delysid, you have been asked multiple times to produce evidence that corporations and people will behave ethically in a libertarian society. So far, you have failed to do this.
I now invoke the 3 failures to answer rule. If a person posts 3 times without answering a fair question posed to him/her, we can conclude that s/he has no answer to it.

@julian Frost

Can you prove to me that governement officials are going to behave ethically? Why is the burden on me that every person, or every business, or every corporation is going to behave ethically? I made no such claim.

If a corporation (which is a product of government FYI) is supposed to behave ethically, is not the same burden on the agents of the state? What is stopping them? Democracy? What if 51% vote to enslave the 49%? Then what? You do not have to buy the products of a business if you do not agree. You have to participate by the laws of the State even if you disagee. That is the fundamental difference. A business (or corporation) only has power over you if the State declares so.

@Delysid:

Why is the burden on me that every person, or every business, or every corporation is going to behave ethically in the absence of government?

FTFY. Because you are arguing that libertarianism is viable. We have given you examples that show it isn't, now you must bring your evidence.

If a corporation (which is a product of government FYI) is supposed to behave ethically, is not the same burden on the agents of the state? What is stopping them?

Checks and balances. If a government employee is corrupt, incompetent or malicious, you can go to his/her supervisor and complain. If that doesn't work, you can approach the courts for relief. In one example, the provincial superintendent of education maliciously excluded a company from a contract. The company won a ruling and is getting R4 million in compensation.

What if 51% vote to enslave the 49%? Then what?

A little thing called the Constitution would stop that. Also, I'll turn that around on you. What if the most powerful 5% in a libertarian state decide to enslave the 95%? Then what?

You do not have to buy the products of a business if you do not agree. You have to participate by the laws of the State even if you disagee.

Um, there's a little thing called emigration. If you don't like the laws of the land, you can move somewhere else like Somalia. Also, you have the option to take actions to get laws with which you disagree rescinded. Remember the Civil Rights Movement? The fight against apartheid?
You appear to be confusing government with dictatorship.

@Julian - because to a person like Delsyid, government = dictatorship 100% of the time, because he deals in absolutes, remember?

Why is the burden on me that every person, or every business, or every corporation is going to behave ethically? I made no such claim.

No one expects you to prove any such thing, since it is quite obvious that not everyone does behave ethically. I want to know how such unethical behavior would be dealt with in a libertarian society. What would stop employers from paying their workers the very least they can get away with? What would make them provide decent pay and conditions for their workers?

It seems clear to me that some level of unemployment is unavoidable in an industrialized nation, especially with increasing automation. How would the unemployed be fed, clothed and housed in a libertarian society? Would they depend on charity like they do in developing world?

In a libertarian society there wouldn't be any welfare because that would require taxation, and employers would be allowed to refuse to employ trade union members, so a worker couldn't withdraw his labor in protest at unfair pay and conditions without the danger of starvation. It seems to me that nothing would prevent conditions for workers from rapidly deteriorating into similar conditions to those seen in the early 19th century.

Is that what really you would like to see happen? If not, what do you think would happen and why?

@Kreb - the book "Jennifer Government" pretty much sums up what would probably occur in such a "Libertarian Paradise."

A very scary scenario, to say the least....

When you get down to it, tyranny and anarchy are two sides of the same coin. In the USSR, government-run manufacturing was essentially an unregulated monopoly, as the regulators and the business were one and the same. After Somalia broke down, the ones with all the weapons set the rules. The idea that anarcho-capitalism would lead to a free society is absurd at best.

Can you prove to me that governement officials are going to behave ethically?

No. That's exactly the point we've been trying to make: we cannot expect all anyone--government officials, CFO's, small business owners, etc., to uniformly behave ethically. Some will always see an advantage in behaving unethically.

That's precisely why government checks and balances, regulating industries, creating judicial systems capable of punishing violators and allowing those harmed to recover damages, etc., are necessary.

Because we fully expect some people to behave badly when they feel it's in there own interest..

So, given that in even the presence of strong regulation and a judicial systems capable of punishing offenders people will still behave unethically, what credible reason is there to believe they'd behave any better, rather than worse, in the absence of either?

I believe that most people do behave ethically - based on their own system of ethics. This may not coincide with what you mean by ethics.

@Krebiozen

Government is not a charity. By it's nature it cannot be a charity. Government is force. In order to give to one it must take by force from another. The American Founding Fathers scoffed at the idea of a positive government in which a government proactively gives things because they knew history and knew the Greece City-States were such a disaster. The American government was set up to protect negative rights.

Politicians long ago realized they could secure power and support by stealing from others and giving to them. It's a savage, primitive system.

Once again we are back to the pure conjecture and fear-mongering of what happens when God the government does not redistribute wealth. "Jennifer government!"

@Krebiozen

I am suspicious that you have never read any libertarian philosophy beyond that one example you gave, as you keep repeating the same myths and fallacies over and over again that are repeated on progressive blogs.

Read Anarchy, State, and Utopia for an in depth discussion of positive versus negative rights. Robert Nozick demolishes the ethics of the barbaric system of force required for redistribution of wealth.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchy,_State,_and_Utopia

@Gray Falcon

Tyranny and anarchy are two sides of the same coin?

No. Liberty and authoritarianism are opposite.

Somalia was ravaged by a socialist dictator for decades. Still today Western powers heavily arm various insurgent political group. How do you think the warlords got the money and weapons in the first place? Magic? The United States government and other western governments armed them. The example of Somalia as being anarchy is could not be any more ridiculous.

Also, Somalia has a government.

It's like I'm talking to parrots who just keep squawking Somalia over and over again with no understanding of what they are talking about.

"SOMALIA. CHECKMATE." God dammit come on at least attempt to think critically.

Every 'argument' being said is the same things repeated by everyone. Libertarians mock the antiintellectualism.

http://www.reddit.com/r/Shitstatistssay/

The American Founding Fathers scoffed at the idea of a positive government in which a government proactively gives things because they knew history and knew the Greece City-States were such a disaster. The American government was set up to protect negative rights.

Do you have any evidence of this?

To remind you, they are

How would your unregulated free market society would deal with the problems posed by the generation of chemical, radioactive and bio-hazardous waste?

Given that in even the presence of government 'force' (i.e., strong regulation and a judicial system capable of punishing offenders) we observe that people will still behave unethically, what credible evidence suggests people would behave any better in its absence?

@JGC - don't you understand, they'll have their freedom!!!! Isn't that enough? (certainly is for Delsyid, I guess)

Delysid, unlike you, I can look up information on the Net:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia
Somalia recently re-established a government. As a result, piracy has fallen significantly. And you are not advocating liberty, you are demanding anarchy. Liberty and anarchy are not the same things.

I am reminded of a scene from "Kenichi the Mightiest Disciple" where a delinquent gang attempted to recruit him with the leader talking about how he was seeking his own freedom. Kenichi's response: "If what you call freedom involves hurting other people... that isn't freedom, that's tyranny!"

You won’t change my mind about libertarianism with “evidence” because I don’t view politics as a science.

Given what you've demonstrated on the latter front, this doesn't appear to be any great loss.

I wish you would please read Human Action to understand why I think this way.

Inasmuch as the comical supernaturalism of "Praxeology" purports to be an axiomatic deductive system and you have the temerity to drop howlers such as "you need to take a logic course," why aren't you simply presenting formal proofs?

I am suspicious that you have never read any libertarian philosophy beyond that one example you gave, as you keep repeating the same myths and fallacies over and over again that are repeated on progressive blogs.

As I have told you, I read a lot of libertarian and anarchist literature in my youth. Like you I accepted that government comes from the barrel of a gun, that it is an extension of the robber barons enslaving the masses etc.. It was taking a degree in social anthropology including a module on economic anthropology that made me start asking myself the kinds of questions I have been asking you.

You keep dismissing my questions and describing them as "myths and fallacies". They are not, they are questions, and you and the libertarian literature I have read have no coherent answers to them.

why aren’t you simply presenting formal proofs?

Delysid wouldn't know a proof if one smacked him in the face. He's super great at plagiarizing wikipedia though!

Once again we are back to the pure conjecture and fear-mongering of what happens when God the government does not redistribute wealth.

We have evidence as to what happens when it does. You have failed to provide any answers on what happens when it doesn't. You admit (at least in my case) that you have no answer, and then you want us to accept on faith that a completely free market works.

Delysid has admitted that even if it could be proven that libertarianism made everyone except himself both poor and miserable, and socialism made us all wealthy and happy, he would still advocate libertarianism.

I don't think you have to be a strict utilitarian to see that this is a ridiculous privileging of abstractions over human beings, and not arguable with. He believes it because he read a book.

Delysid, have you read Goldman or Kropotkin?

Given that in even the presence of government ‘force’ (i.e., strong regulation and a judicial system capable of punishing offenders) we observe that people will still behave unethically, what credible evidence suggests people would behave any better in its absence?

The immutable and infallible "theorems" of "Praxeology" are, like other scientific laws, value-free. It therefore is unable to generate statements about ethics.

I wish that one of my one of my sceptical brothers and sisters would draw attention to Delysid's continued choice to use loaded language to describe opponents ( e.g. socialists, the g-d government) whilst preporting to himself represent 'liberty', etc.

I-btw- have work here.

@Denice - I've commented above that Delsyid proscribes absolutist positions to his opponents - which is a huge burning strawman, since no one here has articulated that view (except himself, of course).

@Denice: I think I mentioned it once or twice, but there's still more to be said. He seems to be under the delusion that simply calling his ideal society a "free society" makes it so. If one calls a suitcase a duck, it will not quack and fly away. Likewise, calling a society where a few wealthy have power over a great many poor and middle class a "free society" does not change the fact that it is functionally identical to feudalism.

Fair enough.

It's funny revisiting this stuff again. What strikes me is that libertarians (and other laissez faire capitalists) seem to think that capitalism and the concept of property are somehow 'natural'. In 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' Nozick talks of people's rights in 'a state of nature', a concept taken from Locke.

It seems to me that 'a state of nature' knows nothing about property, and that any rights we have are those that we agree between ourselves, unless you believe in a God. Nozick declares that people have rights by fiat - more argument by assertion.

So much of this is a description of how people would like the world to be, with no thought at all given to how these ideas would work out in practice.

So basically none of you are going to read any libertarian economics or philosophy? Is this correct? You want me to spoon-feed it to you in comments to you can immediately reject it and mock me without being burdened with critical thinking? All I see is excuses from all of you. Narad won't read Human Action because he read a Wikipedia criticism of praxealogy. Krebiozen won't read Anarchy, State, and Utopia because of some stupid irrelevant ramblings about religion and natural rights. Denise or whoever it was couldn't even handlle Ayn Rand, the Harry Potter of libertarianism.

You are all perfect examples of anti-intellectualism. WE ALREADY KNOW STATISM IS THE ANSWER THEREFORE WE DON'T HAVE TO CONSIDER ANY OTHER WAY.

None of you want to learn anything. You just won't to wallow in ignorance, repeat fallacies, and mock me. I can't explain

SOMALIA!!!!

@Krebiozen

How about the Ethics of Liberty by Rothbard then? The difference between Rothbard and Nozick compared to the average progressive is splitting hairs, but there is more than one way to approach natural rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Ethics_of_Liberty

http://www.mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp

Delysid wouldn’t know a proof if one smacked him in the face. He’s super great at plagiarizing wikipedia though!

One might note that the DAT doesn't include an analytical section, as the GRE at least used to (i.e., a version of the bulk of the LSAT). In fact, I had been meaning to get around to this, but it went kind of stale:

Oh you got an 800 on the GRE? You must be so good at arithmetic and spelling tests!

The DAT does have a standard verbal section. I take the characterization as "spelling tests" as prima facie evidence that D. fared poorly on it,* and by extension, I'd guess the same for the quantitative.

One thing that's amazing is that, according to the "DAT User's Manual," in 1999, 2004, and 2009, the percentages of test takers who successfully answered all 40 questions were 0.0%, 0.3%, and 0.1%, respectively. If the "DAT Question of the Day" is even close to representative, this is appalling.

The general chemistry numbers are quite scary as well, and somewhat perplexing when compared with the O-chem results, which are sometimes higher by bin. Anyway, back to verbal comprehension, from the same post:

Dentists do more surgery than most physicians. I give nerve blocks every day. We don’t have the same prescribing privileges because, to quote you, “it’s a matter of state law.” I see you are as ignorant about dentistry as you are about economics.

Again, a failure. What I was referring to was not prescribing privileges, but use of the title "doctor." This year's Florida Senate Bill 612 would have encompassed dentists.

D. was also predictably wide of the mark on prescribing privileges per se. Dentists are not generally limited in any detailed fashion by statute but rather by the usual course of dentistry itself. If it's defensible, anything goes.

As for the putatively impressive nature of "giv[ing] nerve blocks every day," I count 13 possible targets, and I doubt that he has all of them under his belt. A quick scan gives 16 for podiatrists, but I might be guilty of double-counting, and some involve redirecting within a single stick.

* Consonant with babbling about HIPAA while complaining about "nativigat[ing] the mountains of paperwork I have to do just to treat a Medicaid patient." Why a dental student would be tasked with this is left as a marginally amusing exercise for the reader.

How about the Ethics of Liberty by Rothbard then?

I already have a copy, and I downloaded 'Anarchy, State, and Utopia' earlier. I do like to revisit stuff I haven't thought about for a while from time to time, just in case I missed something. This is all philosophical speculation, as the introduction to 'The Ethics of LIberty' states of Nozick:

Rather, Nozick's libertarianism was, and claimed to be, no more than just an interesting thought. He did not mean to do any real harm to the ideas of his socialist opponents. He only wanted to throw an interesting idea into the democratic open-ended intellectual debate, while everything real, tangible, and physical could remain unchanged and everyone could go on with his life and thoughts as before.

Even Rothbard describes libertarianism as, "a philosophy seeking a policy", and like Novick he defines ethics and rights by assertion and then argues from them using logic. If you invent your premises you can make any argument logical.

As I stated earlier, this is all about how the writer thinks things should be, with little if any thought about how we can make it a reality. Liberty is the most important thing in libertarianism, almost to the point of becoming a fetish, even when it appears to be the liberty to starve or to be brutalized or coerced. For example, according to Walter Block, Nozick supports voluntary slavery, which doesn't sound like the sort of society I want to live in.

"Dentists do more surgery than most physicians. I give nerve blocks every day. We don’t have the same prescribing privileges because, to quote you, “it’s a matter of state law.” I see you are as ignorant about dentistry as you are about economics."

O bullshit! My dentist gave me an inferior alveolar nerve block last Thursday and it wasn't for oral surgery:

http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/82622-overview

Who the hell wants to give you the right to prescribe the same class of drugs as a medical doctor? You don't "believe" that DEA rules apply to you.

Tick tock, tick tock...only eight more days 'til your fellow travelers refuse to raise the debt limit...and the interest on your education loans goes sky high.

When you apply for *food stamps*, just remember that the posters here paid your dues in the form of personal Income Taxes, Tidy Bowl Man.

* You cannot use the food stamp benefit to buy tobacco or liquor.

Narad won’t read Human Action because he read a Wikipedia criticism of praxealogy.

As usual, you fare poorly by ascribing your own habits to others. I haven't even looked at the W—pedia entry, as it happens. None of this is particularly relevant to your pathetic bitching that it's necessary to slog through a thousand-page book before one is eligible to point out such things as your cratering signal-to-noise ratio.

If you're so fυcking enamored of it, perhaps you should try, oh, I dunno, actually deploying your profound knowledge of the work rather than waving frantically in its general fυcking direction.

Dammit Narad. How did you get your last comment through moderation?

I used a mild word (bullsh!t), and I'm stuck in moderation purdah.

Liberty is the most important thing in libertarianism

Taking "liberty" to refer to a condition within some sort of external order, I'd amend that to "freedom," especially in the instant case, where the former is either meaningless or a magically emergent property due to the latter.

How did you get your last comment through moderation?

There are more code points in Unicode, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of by your prudish filters.

My filters aren't prudish !!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SSc8vknPNSQ

Narad,

Taking “liberty” to refer to a condition within some sort of external order, I’d amend that to “freedom,” especially in the instant case, where the former is either meaningless or a magically emergent property due to the latter.

Exactly. Freedom from what, precisely? It amuses me that every tract about libertarianism I have read still insists on at least some rules, mostly about defending private property (which appears to be their sine qua non), and punishing those who steal it (so much for no coercion). Given that, it becomes an argument about which rules are best, as in any political discussion. "My rules are better than your rules". "My rules lead to the magical emergence of liberty, through the action of an 'invisible hand'."

The reason this amuses me is that it seems to me to be the concept of private property, trade and profit that really seems to screw up idyllic human relations in simple societies, not government per se. These are not 'natural' concepts, they are invented ideas. In Delysid's imaginary example of an island where people freely trade fish for huts, it is the possibility of someone stealing fish or huts that makes government of some kind seem necessary. When there is no private property, theft is impossible and government is unnecessary.

I'm not arguing for a society without private property, I quite like living in a society where such ideas exists, but at least we have examples of societies in which this seems to work. My favorites are the Baka pygmies of Central Africa. I thoroughly recommend Colin Turnbull's books about them, and I have an album of them singing somewhere - great yodeling. Other hunter gatherer societies are very similar; they have little if any private property and everything is shared. It's worth quoting from that last link:

Economists argue that sharing has an economically rational basis. The person we share our catch with today may feed us tomorrow when our luck or skill fails. In this view, sharing is a kind of insurance policy that rationally spreads the risk of not having anything to eat. Sharing in hunter-gatherer cultures, however, is much more profound than this. In many cultures at least, there is no connection between who produces and who receives the economic output.

According to Woodburn, for example, some members of the Hadza do virtually no work their entire lives. Many Hadza men gamble with spear points, and many are reluctant to hunt for fear of damaging their gambling "chips," yet these men continue to get their full share of the game animals killed. Although "freeloading" is always a potential problem in Lill cultures, disdain for those not engaged in productive activity is evidently a culturally specific emotion.

In every case I have looked at, and this was something I took an interest in when I studied economic anthropology, this kind of arrangement falls apart as soon as the concept of property and profits enters people's consciousness. The utopian society in which private property, trade and profit exist isn't the 'natural' state of mankind, it appears to be an unattainable fantasy, since the very existence of trade and profit leads to inequality, exploitation and all the negative things that libertarians blame on government.

I should perhaps clarify that last part. I don't believe we could have developed the kind of technology we have, and the ability to (more or less) feed as many people as we do without capitalism. What I'm suggesting is that capitalism leads to the problems (not least cities and huge populations) that require some form of government to solve them. Libertarians seem to think these problems are caused by government and that they would disappear if we abolished or drastically reduced the size of government. I think they have it backwards.

Now this may be crass of me but I often wonder if their cherished 'freedom' boils down to freedom from taxes. Government and the services it provides cost money thus the need for revenue.

A milder form would replace progressive taxes with a flat tax or sales tax thus "equalising" the burden.
Or so they tell us.

It’s worth quoting from that last link:

Economists argue that sharing has an economically rational basis....

Of course, the fundamental "postulate" of "Praxeology," which taken to be unassailably true outside of the "system," thus essentially breaking the whole thing, is that all action is rational. This makes D.'s repeated accusations of "irrationality" in these comments all the more curious, as the concept does not Praxeologically apply. Action is either rational or "a reactive response to stimuli on the part of bodily organs and instincts which cannot be controlled by the volition of the person concerned" (which seems to force strict mind-body dualism, as well).

It's almost as though he didn't read it very carefully.

#722 If you want people here to read books, are you willing to read books they suggest as well? Any quid pro quo here?

@Narad

So now you are attacking the profession of dentistry? Maybe if you spent more time researching facts and less time autofellatiating you would have discovered that the DAT does in fact contain a quantitative reasoning section. I took the DAT, MCAT, and GRE, and the DAT was by far the most difficult and GRE by far the easiest. I'm extremely amused at how proud of yourself of you are about that test. It's basically retaking the SAT. Congratulations on your amazing accomplishment. lol

How cute that you linked to a government bill to decide if a dentist is a doctor or not. Your belief in the church of government is so entrenched that you cannot even help looking to the government as the final authority. "I am Narad, high priest of statism, and I will only think what my government overlords tell me to think!"

You are desperate to smear me in any way you can. Narad, I understand what you are going through. I suspect that you are unable to differentiate your individuality from the collectivist mindset of statism, and it must feel like that by opposing government I am really opposing you.

Although most adults develop to become independent beings, some people retain infant-like physical and/or psychological dependence on the government bosom. Some people prefer the safety of the womb over the dangers and challenges of the external world.

It's kind of adorable Narad. Baby penguins can be imprinted to think a sock-puppet is their parent, and you have been indoctrinated to trust that politicians are your mother, father, and god.

The State is your Shepherd, Narard.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1DgYMYVaUE

#722 Also, if you will not change your mind under any circumstance whatsoever, this is not an argument.

This is people proselytizing each other, or at least, perhaps, one person proselytizing a lot of people who actually were interested in an argument.

I don't like being proselytized, whether it's an ardent Baptist, an ardent Creationist, an ardent Atheist, an ardent Socialist, an ardent Libertarian, or whatever.

If other people are interested in hearing a plea from a preacher, they can certainly continue here, but really, expecting them to have some sort of amazing conversion experience like you did is a bit much.

You want me to spoon-feed it to you in comments to you can immediately reject it and mock me without being burdened with critical thinking?

No I don't, actually. I simply want the answers to a couple of questions which I've asked you repeatedly:

How would your unregulated free market society would deal with the problems posed by the generation of chemical, radioactive and bio-hazardous waste?

Given that in even the presence of government ‘force’ (i.e., strong regulation and a judicial system capable of punishing offenders) we observe that people will still behave unethically, what credible evidence suggests people would behave any better in its absence?

So now you are attacking the profession of dentistry? Maybe if you spent more time researching facts and less time autofellatiating you would have discovered that the DAT does in fact contain a quantitative reasoning section.

I said analytical, dumbass. Did you not notice that I then went on to specifically comment on the DAT quantitative section? Your execrable reading comprehension (and, apparently, faulty memory, but I'll return to that when I finish a spot of work) once again blazes forth.

It's more than freedom from taxes--recall the persistent demand to be free from regulations as well--no OSHA, no FDA, etc. It's freedom from anything that gets in the way of maximizing their personal wealth at the expense of others.

Mock us all you want, Delysid, but let me ask you something. If a gang of thugs were going around town beating up people for fun, would it be wrong to stop them? They aren't committing property crimes, and arresting them would be using force to impede their freedom. Do you simply lie down and enjoy it?

@Khani

Isn't this entire blog dedicated to proselytizing?

I am willing to read some statist literature. But you have to keep in mind that I am bombarded by it everywhere. On the other hand a person has to actively seek out libertarian philosophy. I didn't hear the word 'libertarian' until I was 21 years old.

I've literally heard every single argument every person has given in this thread over and over again. Statist propaganda is ubiquitous. I read a lot of it on my own just to stay sharp (just like I read Natural News). For a while I was reading Conscience of a Liberal daily, and it was like self-flagellation.

#773 No, it's not dedicated to proselytizing. It's dedicated to exposing poor arguments in bad science.

And yours have been exposed.

Delysid, the reason you've heard all those arguments over and over again is because they're valid. You have made no effort to debunk them, you simply insinuated that the ones making the arguments have an agenda, a technique regularly applied by the USSR.

"If a gang of thugs were going around town beating up people for fun, would it be wrong to stop them? "

Most libertarians I know are not pacifists. Self-defense is a natural right.

It's ironic you say this in defense of the government. The government is the worst gang there is. They take whatever they damn well please. Even the mafia doesn't confiscate anywhere near as much property as governments.

Government: Let's protect ourselves from people robbing us by giving a group of people a legal monopoly on robbing us.

What brilliant logic.

Also, this is slightly off-topic, but it's a perspective that is not expressed often enough.

When should you shoot a cop? "That question, even without an answer, makes most law-abiding tax payers go into major conniptions."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cElTyqJkMEw

Delysid: Acting in self-defense is still using force to impose your views on another. Isn't it more right just to let them do what they want?

More seriously, say you manage to fend off one attacker. What happens when the rest decide to pull out knives and cut you into pieces? You decide to pull out a gun and shoot one, they pull out theirs and shoot you more. After they finish you, a bunch of your friends strike in retaliation. Then their relatives get involved to deal with your friends. Soon an entire city is at war. What's to prevent this?

@Gray Falcon

Every country in the world has governments, and every country in the world has gangs murdering each other. Why hasn't government solved this problem?

Personally I think everyone in the world should take more psychedelic drugs.

Delysid: I'm not talking about gangs, I'm talking about a total breakdown of civilization. With no legal recourse, revenge killings are the only available option. What's to prevent all-out war?

By the way, if anyone thinks I'm exaggerating, here's some news about Albania:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/albania/7843351/Albani…

Sorry for breaking in again, but I decided to do some checking. The Code of Hammurabi, one of the first major codifications of law, was notable for it's time for outlawing blood feuds and marriage by capture.
http://www.ancienttexts.org/library/mesopotamian/hammurabi.html
Something tells me Delysid's "free society" has no means of preventing either.

@Gray Falcon

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ongoing_conflicts

Government is doing a pretty terrible f-ing job of preventing killing as well.

@Gray Falcon

Again, your argument is conjecture.

My evidence is the reality of ongoing government military conflicts (wars).

Okay, no more talking directly to Delysid. First of all, he's one of those who thinks an imperfect solution is as bad as no solution at all. Yes, war, crime, and corruption still exist, but removing the means of keeping them under control is madness itself. What's more, somehow, he thinks direct examples are conjecture. A person of average intelligence would realize Hammurabi wrote his laws for a reason.

Direct evidence? LOL The Code of Hammurabi is direct evidence?

About Albania...

"not even the law can help them."

Then what do you want me to say? I don't know how to solve the blood feuds. How do YOU solve it? This is a ridiculous question you are asking me.

Direct evidence? LOL The Code of Hammurabi is direct evidence?

About Albania...

"not even the law can help them."

Then what do you want me to say? I don't know how to solve the blood feuds. How do YOU solve it? This is a ridiculous question you are asking me.

How to debate a libertarian: reference more and obscure events, preferably in cultures completely opposite to Western culture and in ancient history and blame it on libertarians.

This is why statists bring up Somalia like it is self-explanatory.

Now Gray Falcon is citing the Code of Hammurabi and Albanian Blood feuds?

Personally I think everyone in the world should take more psychedelic drugs.

They don't seem to have done you much good. What do you think would happen if your suggestion (or, rather, what you presumably intended to say) were to come true?

If Delysid bothered to read the article past the headline, he'd realize the reason the law wasn't able to help was due to a lack of interest. When Communism was in charge, they were quite a bit less tolerant of feuds.

I get it...now. The amateurish science blogger likes to hang with the uneducated Libertarians, so that he can impress them with his intellectual prowess. Too bad that doesn't work for the soon- to-be-doctor, here.

http://www.dailypaul.com/300419/a-state-court-system-is-intrinsically-u…

A State court system is intrinsically unfair and fallible regardless of the "Vaccine Court."
Submitted by Delysid on Thu, 09/26/2013 - 00:33
in

Health
DP Original
Ohio

There is a lot of controversy regarding the Vaccine Court. Let me break it down from my perspective as a staunch libertarian (anarcho-capitalist) and soon-to-be doctor (lifelong student of science). Arguments against the no-fault liability system for vaccines produced by pharmaceutical companies are ubiquitous on the Daily Paul, so I will be the lonely devil's advocate with defense of the vaccine court...

Soon-to-be-doctor ???

I have to take issue with something Krebiozen said earlier.

The utopian society in which private property, trade and profit exist isn’t the ‘natural’ state of mankind, it appears to be an unattainable fantasy, since the very existence of trade and profit leads to inequality, exploitation and all the negative things that libertarians blame on government.

It's not the existence of trade or profit that cause inequality and exploitation, it's human nature. Communism tried to remove the "market" in the hopes that a workers' paradise would follow. It failed dismally. The communists got things backwards: humans aren't corrupt because the market is slanted; the market is slanted because humans are fallible.
Having said that, that also argues that Delysid's libertarian paradise will rapidly become a dystopia.

Now, where was I? Oh, yes.

So now you are attacking the profession of dentistry?

No, I'm mocking your seemingly limitless pretensions.

I took the DAT, MCAT, and GRE, and the DAT was by far the most difficult and GRE by far the easiest.

Odd that you didn't mention it when the subject was ripe. Anything else? GMAT? ASVAB? OAT? TOEFL? In any event, you'll have to excuse me if the fact that you have twice managed to err in characterizing the GRE rather strongly suggests that you're not familiar with it. Your demonstrated shortcomings in the verbal and general reasoning realms don't help.

As for claiming that the DAT was "by far" harder than the MCAT, perhaps you would like to reconcile this with your self-reported poorer performance on the latter. And no, I don't believe that 'S' for a second.

I’m extremely amused at how proud of yourself of you are about that test.

You seem to forget that I only mentioned it because you elected to flog test scores in support of the risible delusion that you "guarantee that [you] have stronger science credentials than most of you here," as well as the fact that I concluded the observation by pointing out what they actually measure, which most certainly isn't what you were attempting to use them for.

It’s basically retaking the SAT. Congratulations on your amazing accomplishment.

You once again forget that I didn't take the same GRE that you putatively did. The popular wisdom seems to be that the verbal section is more difficult, with the quantitative being roughly the same, which the inventory plainly reveals to be more difficult than the DAT quantitative section. Selah.

lol

How cute that you linked to a government bill to decide if a dentist is a doctor or not.

That was the entire point of the original observation, genius. I see that it continues to elude you.

Your belief in the church of government is so entrenched that you cannot even help looking to the government as the final authority. “I am Narad, high priest of statism, and I will only think what my government overlords tell me to think!”

If you didn't have the reasoning skills of a loofah, it might have occurred to you that I haven't said a thing about politics anywhere in these comments. You have precisely nothing from which to infer my opinions about the proper role of government. Of course, given the abject poverty of your rhetorical armamentarium, it's no surprise that you are forced to resort to leaping to baseless conclusions over and over again.

You are desperate to smear me in any way you can.

"Desperate"? The buffet is overflowing. Moreover, why would I be "desperate" when you fail at every turn? It's nothing but idle observation at this point.

Narad, I understand what you are going through. I suspect that you are unable to differentiate your individuality from the collectivist mindset of statism, and it must feel like that by opposing government I am really opposing you.

This is good; it's turning into DJT. The rest of your commentary is simply more of the same haplessness that has been well and duly noted by others.

I should perhaps clarify that last part. I don’t believe we could have developed the kind of technology we have, and the ability to (more or less) feed as many people as we do without capitalism.

It's almost enough to make one wonder just how things are supposed to scale once such fetters as patent protection as swept away.

Julian Frost,

It’s not the existence of trade or profit that cause inequality and exploitation, it’s human nature.

I should really have included 'property' with 'trade' and 'profit'. Anyway, I'm not sure I agree with you; in hunter gatherer cultures there is little if any sign of inequality or exploitation, because everything is shared. They have no concept of accumulating food and then using it to trade for other goods or services. It seems to be the combination of human nature and the concepts of private property, trade and especially profit that lead to inequality and exploitation.

In the communist USSR they still had property, money, trade and profit. It was only the means of production that were owned collectively, not what was produced. Marxism has its own form of magical thinking, that says that capitalism is a necessary precursor of the ideal communist state. I remember reading about Marxists encouraging a feudal society to become a capitalist one because that was one step closer to communism (it was somewhere in South America IIIRC), which is almost as nutty as the idea of 'the invisible hand'.

I wish I still had my economic anthropology notes, which I lost in a move a while ago. I read a fascinating anthropological monograph about an agricultural society that shared all labor, and put all the food they gathered in a communal store. This had gone on for hundreds or perhaps thousands of years, with violence, theft and crime being virtually unknown*.

Then some young men returned from visiting a distant city with ideas about creating their own food stores, and trading food for other goods and services in times of scarcity. This led to a rapid breakdown of this society within a generation, with violent crime and theft appearing for the first time. There are other similar examples I came across, but this was the best documented, as the anthropologist was living with these people while this happened.

So, I think it is more accurate to say that human nature plus concepts of trade, personal property and profit lead to inequality and exploitation, unless we have some form of regulation. I suppose it comes down to people's relative tolerance of inequality, exploitation and regulation.

* I do recognize that this sounds suspiciously like a Golden Age myth, but in this case the anthropologist himself witnessed the 'fall from grace'. Then again, Margaret Mead apparently got the wrong end of the stick in Samoa, so who knows?

@Narad

Kiss my ass. It was a 31R apparently. I misremembered because I don't give a crap. My ego isn't tied to my test scores and GPA. You might need to autofellatio to comfort yourself, but I don't and I'm sick of you.

Those are my MCAT scores. I hope it gets your rocks off.

VR10 PS09 R BS12 31R

Another thing to note is Delysid's racism. Somehow, he thinks that because of our superior culture, we wouldn't go the path of other anarchies. Apparently, he thinks nobody outside the government has ever committed a crime or acted foolishly.

Then what do you want me to say? I don’t know how to solve the blood feuds.

And you also don't seem to know how to solve the problem of ensuring industries safely dispose of chemical, radioactive and biological waste.

Or how to ensure factory conditions in those industries are safe for workers, that the owners of those factories doen't exploit child labor does, that their workers are paid a living wage,etc.

And you don't know how to ensure that building codes are in place and adhered to such that individual builders/homeowners do not put entire communities at risk of fire.

Or how to create and maintain effective firefighting organizations to respond to fires that do occur.
Or how to ensure the safety, purity and efficacy of drugs
pharmaceutical companies make and pharmacists sell.

And to go all the way back to one of the first questions your were asked, you have no solution to how we may take care of the most vulnerable members of our society.

it's become obvious you can't offer any solutions to any problems at all. You just keep repeating catch phrases like "Government is force" and "All government is bad--that isn't debatable" and crying about the personal freedoms you say you're being denied--which as far as I can tell is the freedom to screw over anyone you want as long as "I get mine!'

Meanwhile, governments such as our democratic republic, on the other hand, do offer solutions to these problems. OSHA for workplace safety, FDA for drug safety,building codes, fire departments, SNAP programs, etc. Police forces, criminal justice and judicial systems--all government institutions--have been an effective solution to the problem of blood feuds you don't seem to have the first idea how to address.

If you want anyone to accept your dream of a free market society as something desirable, you're going to have to tell us how it would do better than what's in place now.

So let's go back to the central question: given that a small but significant subset of people will behave unethically and exploit others, pollute the environment, make false claims regarding products such as drugs, etc., even in the presence of strong regulations and judical systems which will punish that behavior, how would your free market society lacking deter such behavior at least as well, if not better, than the current systems in place?

- btw- this thread is getting so long it takes forever to load-

At any rate, Delysid appears to be talking about extremes- an idealised Free Place vs Socialistan. However in the real world, there is a spectrum of possibilities where the amount of regulation varies as well other conditions** that would delineate their inclusion along the liberty axis.

Someone- other than me- could make up a list that rated places so we could compare outcomes**- for example, Sweden might place high on regulation etc for Europe compared with Moldava. In the US, NY might be more regulated etc than Wyoming. Examples are purely for illustrative purposes and my own guesses.

Thus we can bring the debate to measurable effects that we can compare rather than talking about possibilities.

Simple question: would anyone prefer to live in Mexico vs Canada? I know, I know, regulation isn't the only issue.

But I hope you can see where I'm going.

** D may choose his own variables and measures of outcome.

#795 Wow, great arguments there...

@JBC

It seems that the Federal Government has compounded the nuclear waste situation with senseless regulation (as it compounds every problem.) A simple Google search brought up many arguments and idea for market-based waste disposal, first of all by transferring responsibility from the tax-payers to the nuclear plants themselves.

http://s3.amazonaws.com/thf_media/2008/pdf/bg2149.pdf

"it’s become obvious you can’t offer any solutions to any problems at all"

I don't claim to have the answers to everything. That is the beauty of the market. Other people will.

"Meanwhile, governments such as our democratic republic, on the other hand, do offer solutions to these problems"

Here we are stuck in the eternal loop again. Because you can't come up with anythign doesn't mean the government is the best way to do it. It's the eternal circular argument of the government is the alpha and the omega.

How come nobody here is criticizing the governmetn for doing a horrible job? Why is it that all the government has to do is make promises? This is the big deceit. Policitians tell people they will solve the problems and never recieve scrutiny for failing to do it. "But the market doesn't make empty promises to me!"

It's like statists prefer to be manipulated lied to. The ends to not justify the means and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

This Lawrence Reed quote could not be any more relevant to this thread.

"It constantly amazes me that defenders of the free market are expected to offer certainty and perfection while government has only to make promises and express good intentions. Many times, for instance, I’ve heard people say, "A free market in education is a bad idea because some child somewhere might fall through the cracks," even though in today’s government school, millions of children are falling through the cracks every day."

People are demanding about how the market would solve nuclear waste dilemmas and Albanian family blood feuds, but nobody is acknowledging the failure of governmetnt

As long as the government does something that is better than doing nothing you say! If a patient is dying with cancer and we beat them over the head with a sledge hammer in a shitty attempt to cure them, at least we tried right!?

Even worse the government is screwing up with our money. But statists will never blame the politicians for stealing their money and making problems worse. All it takes is some charming speeches, a handsome politician, and a law with a helpful sounding name like The Nuclear Waste Disposal Act and total loyalty is given to the government. It doesn't matter if the government is a corrupt, horrible failure, at least they create a fantasy!

@ Khani: I made the mistake by opening up D's "killing a cop" YouTube video. If you recall, D made the first references to his scores on graduate school exams.

Delysid:

A simple Google search brought up many arguments and idea for market-based waste disposal, first of all by transferring responsibility from the tax-payers to the nuclear plants themselves.

And how would we ensure that the companies handled waste disposal, and did so properly and safely? We'd need a way to monitor and police them to make sure they weren't just dumping it somewhere, and a way to punish offending companies. Oh wait.

Because you can’t come up with anythign doesn’t mean the government is the best way to do it.

Yet another straw man. Who or what should be responsible for monitoring and enforcing public safety?

How come nobody here is criticizing the governmetn for doing a horrible job?

Are you serious? We do criticise. Just because we think the government is the best way to do certain things doesn't mean we view it as perfect.

Policitians tell people they will solve the problems and never recieve scrutiny for failing to do it.

Yes they do. Otherwise incumbents would never be voted out. Bush 1, Carter, Ford. All 1-term presidents.

“But the market doesn’t make empty promises to me!”

LOLOLOLOLOLOL! You can NOT be serious! How many products fail to live up to the promises made by the manufacturers?

I don’t claim to have the answers to everything. That is the beauty of the market. Other people will.

But you don't appear to have the answers to anything. Doesn't a clever chap like you have any idea of how the market would deal with the real life problems I and others have asked about?

@Kreb - I'm still waiting for his response to where his "hypothesis" has been tried in the real world & was successful....really doesn't seem to be that hard of a question to answer....

I don’t claim to have the answers to everything. That is the beauty of the market. Other people will

It seems to me that those other people have already come up with solutions, which was to regulate that free market, create authorities like OSHA, the FDA, to devise and enforce building codes, to institute a legal minimum wage, to levy taxes which are used to finance public utilities, fire departments, etc.

Because you can’t come up with anythign doesn’t mean the government is the best way to do it.

I'm not arguing that government is necessarily the best way to do it. I'm noting that it can and has done it, while you haven't offered any evidence that a free market system could do it all, or provide a historical example of a free market society that even did it badly.

How come nobody here is criticizing the government for doing a horrible job?

I do criticize the government when I feel it isn't doing a good enough job--however, I don't we'd agree on where it falls short. For example, I expect you think the FDA constitutes failure because it impedes free market forces and actively regulates drugs and other therapies, while I feel it fails because it doesn't have the authority to regulate supplements nor the legal teeth needed to put quacks like Burzynski out of business.

Policitians tell people they will solve the problems and never recieve scrutiny for failing to do it.

No scrutiny--they're elected for life? Journalists and watchdog froups don't monitor and report on their voting records, the failures to realize their campaign promises, etc.? What a strange world you live in--does it get lonely?

The ends to not justify the means and the road to hell is paved with good intentions.

I'd agree--that's why I oppose to means which take the form of sacrificing the well-being of others (especially the most vulnerable members of our society) by eliminating mandated miminum wages, compulsory building codes, prohibition of child labor, drug safety laws, etc., to achieve the ends of eliminating taxation and the creation of an unregulated free market.

@JGC - an "unregulated free market" which has no historical evidence that is it "better or more efficient" than the system we have now....does the government do everything? Of course not - should it, again, of course not....but when you look at areas of the economy that were completely unregulated - like derivatives trading, for example, you see exactly where that gets you - falling off a fiscal cliff.

The 2008 economic collapse did not occur because of too much regulation, it happened because no one had any idea what this "free market" was doing or what effect it would have on the rest of the economy.....in fact, it was the very "under and un-regulated policies" pushed by the Fed Chairman at the time that made the situation much worse than it should have been.

Not exactly a glowing recommendation for this "libertarian utopia" that Delsyid claims it would be.....

Delysid, I note that way above you stated:

Believe it or not I do support government involvement in pollution as far as it involves property rights violations. A factory doesn’t have the right to pollute on the land of someone else. I don’t support hairbrained schemes like carbon taxes, but factories should not be able to just dump chemical wastes into rivers.

What criteria did you use to decide that this issue is one in which government should have authority, instead of just the free market?

Some relevant lines from "The Big Departure" episode of Dragnet:

Sergeant Joe Friday: I don't know, maybe part of it's the fact that you're in a hurry. You've grown up on instant orange juice. Flip a dial - instant entertainment. Dial seven digits - instant communication. Turn a key - push a pedal - instant transportation. Flash a card - instant money. Shove in a problem - push a few buttons - instant answers. But some problems you can't get quick answers for, no matter how much you want them. We took a little boy into Central Receiving Hospital yesterday; he's four years old. He weighs eight-and-a-half pounds. His parents just hadn't bothered to feed him. Now give me a fast answer to that one; one that'll stop that from ever happening again. And if you can't settle that one, how about the 55,000 Americans who'll die on the highway this year? That's nearly six or seven times the number that'll get killed in Vietnam. Why aren't you up in arms about that? Or is dying in a car somehow moral? Show me how to wipe out prejudice. I'll settle for the prejudices you have inside yourselves. Show me how to get rid of the unlimited capacity for human beings to make themselves believe they're somehow right - and justified - in stealing from somebody, or hurting somebody, and you'll just about put this place here out of business!
Officer Bill Gannon: Don't think we're telling you to lose your ideals or your sense of outrage. They're the only way things ever get done. And there's a lot more that still needs doing. And we hope you'll tackle it. You don't have to do anything dramatic like coming up with a better country. You can find enough to keep you busy right here. In the meantime, don't break things up in the name of progress or crack a placard stick over someone's head to make him see the light. Be careful of his rights. Because your property and your person and your rights aren't any better than his. And the next time you may be the one to get it. We remember a man who killed six million people, and called it social improvement.
Sergeant Joe Friday: Don't try to build a new country. Make this one work. It has for over four hundred years; and by the world's standards, that's hardly more than yesterday.

Policitians tell people they will solve the problems and never recieve scrutiny for failing to do it

Which is why three of the last five governors of Illinois are in jail.

You could make that an argument that government is naturally crooked, or you can make that an argument that there are protocols in place, in this country at least, to monitor and punish illegal activity.

(How did you do so well on all those tests when you can't spell?)

It seems that the Federal Government has compounded the nuclear waste situation with senseless regulation (as it compounds every problem.)

Oh, I can't wait to see what citation might be offered to back that one up...

Other people will.

Yes, the government. See, it's a never ending cycle. We replace the government with libertarian principle and then the free market select a player to ensure radioactive waste is disposed safely and he become part of our government. But now, we're dealing with 244 895 peoples for the government with each having its own business.

How much taxes do we pay to these free market government?

Alain

Believe it or not I do support government involvement in pollution as far as it involves property rights violations.

So instead of "All government is bad" you're position hs now become "Some government is necessary"? I think we've made some small progress...

It is fortunate that the mistake was caught before more damage was caused, but the FDA overreacted and thalidomide was blocked from potential uses for years.

The FDA did not over-react: it reacted appropriately, which is why the US did not undergo the Thalidomide crisis other nations suffered in the late 1950's/early 1960's.

And it’s not that it was 'blocked from other potential uses' but that no additional indications were identified and validated, and that other competing treatments for thalidomide's initial indications (as a sedative, tranquilizer and antiemetic) were available which exhibited equivalent efficacy and far better safety profiles.

But as early as 1964 thalidomide was being investigated for other indications, such as ENL, a complication of Hansen’s disease (aka leprosy). More recently it’s been FDA approved for use in combination with dexamethasone to treat multiple myeloma.

Free-markets are NOT unregulated. This claim just demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what the market is.

The free-market means not regulated by a government monopoly. Three are still forces that regulate in a market. These are market regulations.In medicine, for instance, there are boards that uphold standards of quality that are seperated from the State. This is market regulation.

Someone no doubt will say "markets can't be trusted to self-regulate," and this person will no doubt ignore the fact that they are trusting a governmetn monopoly to self-regulate.

How can government be trusted to to self-regulate? By voting? LMFAO.

Delysid,

first, to whom are you answering and two, which are these board and finally, what's to prevent a state medical board from incorporating and then provide its services for a fee (and to whom?)

Alain

@Alain

What's wrong with charging a fee? If a market governing board spends time and effort making sure that only the highest quality medicine, why shouldn't they charge a fee for their service? You don't have to do business with them. The government on the otherhand taxes you and makes you pay whether you want it or not.

For an example of market regulation look at the Better Business Bureau.

@Everyone demanding for an example of how the markets work. Here is one example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau

To answer my question, there is the FAAP who fail to police Drs. Jay Gordon and Bob Sears even after our own Dr. Chris Hickie dropped his FAAP membership in protest. Considering that the FAAP is paid for by its member, I fail to see how it could have the mandate to protect for the population at large.

Alain

What’s wrong with charging a fee?

bad question, there are fees that I accept and a tax is a fee but I think you are shoving words in my mouth and from your premise, it sound like the government employee should incorporate and provide their services for a fee (and remember, I accept that they charge a fee in their current form, it's called a tax). We could end up with a governing body of countless state and federal employees with competition and alliances. I see the point but why is that different from the actual package?

Alain

@Alain

Well then it's time to start a new governing board that rejects quackery if it continues. Ophthalmologists were getting screwed by the American Board of Ophthalmology so a few hundred of them (including Rand Paul) formed a competitor National Board of Ophthalmology.

Personally I am not a huge fan of the ADA because of its stance on public water fluoridation (I'm not anti-fluoride but anti-mass medication) and stance on the ACA. I think its time for some healthy competition with a science-based medicine free-market approach.

I think its time for some healthy competition with a science-based medicine free-market approach.

If the approach is free-market, what keeps it science-based?

More precisely, do I buy health insurance packaged with the armed forces fee or can I buy it alone. Is there a congregation of packages I need and at the base, what exactly do I need under a libertarian government?

Alain

Delysid,

Basic business sense is that cutting the middleman (the politician) end up wasting a lot of time to figure out the providers of various insurances that I need to ask: are you willing to pay your lawyer at least 10 000$ per year to review each and every 180 different insurance contracts you need in order to have your basic living condition (from snow removal up to health insurance) fulfilled?

Alain

Ophthalmologists were getting screwed by the American Board of Ophthalmology so a few hundred of them (including Rand Paul) formed a competitor National Board of Ophthalmology.

How does it fare for public protection? Do they police their members?

Alain

Perhaps the most important question remaining to be answered. The permanently unemployable, where do they draw their salaries? Is there an insurance for which parents can pay in case their baby has a severe disability that will provide a basic monthly allowance for their child once it reach majority?

Alain

Kiss my ass.

Sorry, I don't know where it's been.

It was a 31R apparently. I misremembered because I don’t give a crap.

You know, 'P' kind of looks like 'R'. Perhaps you've also "misremembered" drawing in the extra stroke. As for your not "giv[ing] a crap," I will once again remind you that this was one of the legs of the stool upon which your self-assessed superior "science credentials" rested.

My ego isn’t tied to my test scores and GPA.

Yah. Of course, given that you're apparently also wandering around misrepresenting yourself as a "soon-to-be doctor," it's pretty clear that your "ego"—a term that, like "wealth," you almost certainly are unable to provide any coherent definition of—is very much "tied to" shiny symbols.

This sort of thing in fact appears to be more or less what glues together your persona should anyone bother to poke it with a stick to see what happens. You are semiotically challenged, wandering around some sort of gloamy cognitive landscape that you fancy yourself to have metaphysically charted in painstaking detail.

What you don't understand, and the reason that psychedelics are sadly wasted on you, is that this is all in your head. The moment you try to deploy the paranoiac road atlas in normal company, the rectification of names drops on you like a 16 ton weight. Profound slogans governing the universe turn out to have no identifiable referents. Invocations of magic names and words fail to function, and when tasked, you can't even explain what they're supposed to do or how they're supposed to apply.

You might need to autofellatio to comfort yourself, but I don’t and I’m sick of you.

It's not my fault that you're not exactly flying off the shelves in the marketplace of ideas, kid, or that you're poorly equipped to deal with people observing that you're full of shıt when you are, in fact, full of shıt. For someone who proclaims to have Found the Truth in a putatively apodictic fever dream that declares "anteriority and consequence are essential concepts of praxeological reasoning," you seem to have quite the penchant for pretending that your own lapses, no matter how comically exaggerated, never existed.

@Everyone demanding for an example of how the markets work. Here is one example.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_Business_Bureau

Jeezums. What's next, Who's Who?

@Narad - good catch. The BBB is notorious for not following up on complaints & basically being a lion with no teeth...not exactly the best example....

I am a soon-to-be doctor. I didn't say "physician."

@Narad

Did you have your eyes closed pretentiously as you typed this? Is a condescending, superfluous vocabulary a sexual stimulation for you?

I'm not a gambler, but I'd bet a small wager that your pompous online persona is compensation for your life inadequacies. I'm suspicious you are an underemployed neckbeard, a Paul Finch of the American Pie series.

I know your type. Miserable wretches like you infest academia. Fortunately for me I encounter people like you far more often through the anonymity of the internet than in the real world.

Why are you so ashamed of having chosen dentistry?

The BBB is notorious for not following up on complaints & basically being a lion with no teeth…not exactly the best example….

The BBB has been irrelevant for as long as I can remember. The fact that they've devolved into a pay-to-play racket that will expel businesses for criticizing them is merely the end game. The Invisible Dong strikes again.

@Shay

I'm not ashamed at all to have chosen dentistry. I'd much rather be a dentist than a physician, especially in the current nightmare political environment.

My issue is that Narad is a douche. Don't confuse that with self-loathing.

An intelligent person's response to someone using words he doesn't understand: Use a dictionary.

Delysid's response to someone using words he doesn't understand: Engage in the vilest insults possible.

Here's a hint: Intelligence isn't simply a matter of numbers and scores on tests.

But why do you insist on calling yourself a soon to be doctor when that choice of words is misleading? How does Narad figure into that?

Your expressed your fundamental objection to government @ 207 as "Government is force. Government intervention is force. I fail to see how your 'proposed market regulation boards'areo not also equal force, nor how market board intervention is not also force.

Unless, of course they lack the ability/authority to intervene and compel adherence to regulation.

In which case, what good are they? Are they just a free market incarnation of Yelp or Angie's list?

My issue is that Narad is a douche.

For observing that you're a poseur? What are your exact quibbles? You can't tolerate having factual errors publicly corrected over and over until it finally dawns on you that you're making a fool of yourself and have to pretend that it never happened? Or being taken to task for engaging in little more than prattle punctuated with tantrums? Being unable to produce a single content-bearing remark about the underpinnings of the top of your "must read" list? What happened to "personal responsibility for one’s own actions"?

What, exactly, would constitute not "being a douche" here in your meticulously constructed, everything-interconnecting "worldview"? Is this, at long last, a token that you can actually define?

Delysid @816:

The free-market means not regulated by a government monopoly.

"government monopoly"? You're now just throwing out phrases without understanding their meaning.
@818:

What’s wrong with charging a fee? If a market governing board spends time and effort making sure that only the highest quality medicine, why shouldn’t they charge a fee for their service?

Firstly, that's a big "if". Secondly, ever heard the saying "the one who pays the piper calls the tune"?
Here's a scenario. Suppose there's a dominant, non-government board to set standards of training in medicine. Suppose your board starts getting "sponsored" by a supplier of medical equipment. That board then "encourages" registered members to only use that supplier. Doctors who don't start having all sorts of "problems" with their licenses.
Your answer may be "well, set up another board", but you're acting against a dominant player in the market which makes it damn near impossible to succeed. In private enterprise, dominant players have often tried and succeeded in strangling new entrants.
There is a reason we have checks and balances, antitrust laws and government authorities.

Oh for cripes sake, which entity does D. think monitors and invesigates the stock markets? Do you want Lloyd Blankfein from Goldman Sachs or Jamie Dimon from JP Morgan sending in their guys to run the SEC?

http://www.sec.gov/

Who does D. think monitors airplane, train and other public conveyances safety? Do you want the lawyers, the PR people and stewardesses from Boeing supervising airline crashes? Isn't it far better to have aeronautical engineers and retired pilots supervisor the removal and analyses of big jet wreckages?

http://www.ntsb.gov/

Why does AoA make a BFD about an agency head at the FDA, who is a doctor and vaccine researcher opting for a late life career as an exec. at a pharmaceutical company?

Should we insist that Merck think about Dan Olmsted or David Kirby, who have no science or immunology educations or backgrounds, and who crapped up, and who crapped on, research projects...as contenders for highly placed positions at Merck's R&D vaccine division?

@lilady

Finally someone one agrees with me! You are referring of course to a phenomenon called regulatory capture in which the government is used as a weapon against competitors. This is called "crony capitalism," an unfortunate term because the concept is a failure of government and not the markets.

I do not want people like Tim Gietner of Goldman Sachs as Sec. of Treasury.

Hopefully you are smart enough to not fall for the fallacy of "government only fails because the wrong people were thre! Government works when the right people are in charge!"

Because this would ignore that the institution of government itself is a failure in regulatory authority regardless of who is in charge.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regulatory_capture

Delysid, there's something important you need to hear. Stop being an asshole, it's not going to help. So far, you've been immature, dishonest, spiteful, petty, and judgmental, and none of that has helped your case at all. I have no doubt people have abandoned libertarianism just so they wouldn't have to associate with you. I hope for your sake you never take that kind of attitude in dental school, because if you do, it wouldn't matter if you were the best dentist on the planet, you'd never pass. You constantly argue with people who only exist in your mind, causing casual viewers to wonder about your sanity. Nobody here has said that the support the current government completely, that there are no bad laws, or that corruption doesn't exist. They simply pointed out you haven't provided a solution to any of those problems. All you've given us is an assurance that we should have faith in the free market. Unless you start calling down fire from the sky or the equivalent, we're not going to put that much faith in your words. Simply put, being an asshole will not get you anywhere.

@Gray - I've never understood how an individual could think that derogatory comments and blanket assertions would convince anyone of the validity of their opinion - all it does is lower the perception of their intelligence and turn people off from the discussion.....you're right, being an asshole never did anyone any favors....perhaps he'll learn that some day.

Because this would ignore that the institution of government itself is a failure in regulatory authority regardless of who is in charge.

This is just another entirely unsupported assertion of personal opinion.

Why what evidence demonstrates government must always fail regardless of who is in charge?

What evidence demonstrates that a free market where the regulatory oversight now carried out by government agencies such as the FDA,OSHA, and the SEC is instead carried out by the " private governing bodies and boards" you advocate must instead always succeed regardless of who is in charge?

Others suggested that your idealized free market society would unlitimately result in a return to a feudalistic society. I'm beginning to think that's exactly what you'd consider ideal, complete with a return to an associated guild system modeled on the Hanseatic League.

Gray Falcon,

My solution is to abolish the government (or the vast majority of it.) I have offered solutions and I want other people to have the opportunity to offer solutions. It seems as people are asking the question "but without central planning how are we going to have central planning?"

I live my life by my voluntaryist ethical code. I practice what I preach.

Look at the ACA. It's 2800 pages of bureaucratic misery. I want that bill repealed, along with the HMO Act of 1973, EMTALA, HIPAA, Medicare parts A-D, and so on. But how are we going to have health care without the govenrment bureaucracy?

Well I'm doing my part. I'm literally treating patients with my bare hands (well gloved hands). What's everyone else doing?

Also I might be an asshole, but I'm still right.

I wonder what his definition of "government failure" is, since there are numerous instances where the government (and governments in general) have been hugely successful......

Again, he seems to have nothing to argue except absolutes....

Except you've given us no reason to believe that your alternatives would work, since you can't point to a single instance where this has occurred & it has been successful....

Delysid, do you know what the population of the United States of America is? Over three hundred million. A law meant to deal with that many cases is going to be complicated by necessity. Again, please stop arguing with the people in your head.

Interesting side note: In the Discworld series, the Patrician of Ankh-Morpork set up a deal with the local organized crime. They were given legitimate status, allowed a certain amount of robbery over a year, and were required to maintain their monopoly on crime. Take note that being given legitimate status also gave the Patrician access to their names and addresses.

@Lawrence

Without the government who would build Google Fiber?

@Gray Falcon

Why are so many negative examples completely fictional?

"If you want to undrestand a libertarian society read Jennifer Government. Or Discworld. Or play that stupid video game that takes place after an Ayn Rand apocalypse."

http://www.fee.org/the_freeman/detail/7-falsehoods-about-the-free-marke…

@Delsyid - without DARPA, where would the Internet be today?

Oh, and why are fictional examples being used? Because you've given us no "real" examples as to where this has been tried and succeeded, right?

My solution is to abolish the government (or the vast majority of it.)

What problem does that solution address, other then the existence of a governemnt in the first place? Be specific. It certainly doesn't address the problem of corruption, as you've offered no evidence that corruption wouldn't be as if not more widespread once government has been abolished.

I have offered solutions and I want other people to have the opportunity to offer solutions.

I haven't seen you offer solutions beyond privatizing the functions govenment now provides, without offering any evidence wahtsoever that:

a) private agencies would perform as well if not better than the existing government ones

b) that the individuals running the private agencies would be less prone to self-interest and corruption than the existing government ones

c) that market forces would be as if not more effective at deterring corruption in private agencies than the current system of checks and balances, judicial oversight and ability to remove corrupt polticians and appointed individuals from office already is

and of course

d) provide any historical example where this 'solution' has worked in practice

I live my life by my voluntaryist ethical code. I practice what I preach.

So do the Crips, the Bloods, the Aryan Nation, all the 1-per center motorcycle gangs, the Medellin cartel, etc. Voluntaryist ethical codes aren't a recipe for a successful and equitable society.

Look at the ACA. It’s 2800 pages of bureaucratic misery. I want that bill repealed, along with the HMO Act of 1973, EMTALA, HIPAA, Medicare parts A-D, and so on. But how are we going to have health care without the govenrment bureaucracy

Well I’m doing my part. I’m literally treating patients with my bare hands (well gloved hands).

So your solution is to replace a law that's extended health care to millions of citizens who previously were uncovered, allowed all children under 26 to remain covered by their parent's health care insurance, that requires insurers provide coverage for individuals with pre-existing conditions and prohibits them from dropping individuals once they become ill or injured is one man electing to voluntarily treat patients with his own goved hands? Really?

Also I might be an asshole, but I’m still right.

To paraphrase Buckaroo Banzai, that's "Yes on one and no on two."

@Delysid: We have brought up real examples. Every time we did so, you dismissed them by proclaiming that their culture is different from America's. Of course, that could simply mean that in a culture as individualistic as ours, things could be that much worse off.

@Lawrence

I have explained and demolished your demands of "name a real world example of libertarianism" over and over again. You just keep moving the goalpost.

Read I, Pencil to understand how the market works.

http://www.fee.org/files/doclib/20121114_IPencilUpdatedCover2012.pdf

Albanian blood feuds are not the fault of liberterianism. Give me a break. That might be the dumbest argument on the entire thread (and that is saying something).

By the way, the Discworld example is not an example of libertarianism, just the opposite, in fact. Libertarians would simply have let the Thieves' Guild run rampant. The Patrician keeps them under a very tight regulatory leash, and they keep a close watch on unlicensed crime. Most people just pay the thieves up front, knowing they have a strict limit on what they can take in a year. Most of the money the Guild takes from wealthy people, knowing that Guild will keep an eye out for outside criminals, which usually ends up in the hands of smaller merchants and taverns, stimulating the city economy. It's an arrangement that works out well for everyone, save for the occasional unlicensed criminal found floating down the river face-first.

We never said blood feuds were the fault of libertarianism, we said you have no means of dealing with them. I'm not putting blind faith in the free market to provide a solution, the free market in not God. At least the government is a known entity which can be replaced as needed.

Delysid:

I have explained and demolished your demands of “name a real world example of libertarianism” over and over again.

You have? Which comments? Please link to them because I must have missed them.

Albanian blood feuds are not the fault of liberterianism.

We're not saying that they are, we're asking you to show us how a libertarian society would substantially prevent them from happening.

have explained and demolished your demands of “name a real world example of libertarianism” over and over again.

Not that I've seen, but perhaps I missed it. Could you identify by number exactly in which posts where you've done so?

Albanian blood feuds are not the fault of liberterianism.

No one has said that Albanian blood feuds were the fault of libertarianism. We have noted that your proposed free market libertarian society offers no viable solution to the problem of such between groups, while the current system providing for public police agencies, an established criminal justice system, state and federal prisons, etc., does.

The best example Delysid's given involved countries that have more liberal drug policies than the US. And that doesn't show that his anarchic system is better than democracy, given that those governments simply have different policies, usually involving mandatory treatment instead of arrest. In other words, his examples are the same as everything else he gives: He reads the part he wants to read, and tosses out the rest.

@JGC - yes, I would like to see those explanations myself, since I don't believe we've seen any from Delsyid....

As addlepated as Delsyid has continually proven to be, I do have to note with approval how quickly Delsyid noted (and apologized for) posting on the wrong thread.

Still waiting for a citation on all that excess government regulation of nuclear waste, though... :)

One last question Delysid.
How would your libertarian state deal with price fixing?

If I recall correctly, the "libertarian state" doesn't deal with anything. Instead, it waits for the free market to correct itself. Most likely, when angry consumers storm the business's main office, tear apart the company, and eat the board.

Price fixing? It is the State that price fixes and it is disastrous. I don't even understand the question, unless you are talking about the monopoly fallacy.

http://steshaw.org/economics-in-one-lesson/chap17p2.html

@Gray Falcon

No one is forcing you to do business with a business. The only entity that forces you is the State. If a business tries to gouge you don't buy from it. Oil is price fixed by the intergovernment cartel and look at the negative effects that is causing.

Delysid, something you should know about science. If a hypothesis's predictions fail to match up with the real world, that hypothesis is discarded. Your economic theories predict monopolies and price fixing will not happen absent regulation. Monopolies and price fixing have happened (see anti-trust laws), therefore, libertarian economic theory should go the way of phlogiston and the four humors.

Delysid, let's say I run a small business. And let's say I need to ship products to Seattle by truck or rail. And let's say both lines are owned by the same company, who decides to price-gouge me. What am I supposed to do? Deliver them by myself?

Most nuclear waste was created by government nuclear weapons programs FYI.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_Waste_Policy_Act

I don't know the best way to dispose of nuclear waste. Apparently government does either. Blast it into space? Marrianna trench? Yucca mountain? I don't know. Wildlifevaround Chernobyl seems to be thriving. It seems the creatures being screwed most by humans are other humans.

Market monopolies are temporary. When they occur it is not necessarily a bad thing. John D Rockefeller single handidly droppedvthe price of oil from (estimating because I'm working right now) something like 10 dollars a barrel to 30 cents. He made oil cheap affordable for the poorest people in society. He might have been one of the richest humans ever, but he also improved the world in unprecedented levels. Same thing with Vanderbilt and shipping.

http://mises.org/document/6061/

Delysid: I need evidence, not estimates. The drop in oil prices could easily have been from improvements in technology, hardly something only one person needed to do. Now tell me, why should I believe that the only people in the government are those who act out of motiveless malignancy, and that the only people in business are perfectly pure and selfless?

Oh, and by the way, I'm not trusting your libertarian sites for the same reason I would not trust a "science" site that claimed that birds fly through the air due to their special connection to the spirits of the sky, and therefore, heavier that air flight is impossible for humans.

By the way, here's a cite from someone who doesn't have a vested interest:
http://www-cs-faculty.stanford.edu/~eroberts/cs201/projects/corporate-m…

@Delysid:

Price fixing? It is the State that price fixes and it is disastrous.

Really? The state got several bakeries to work together to fix prices in South Africa? The state got the construction companies building stadia and the like for the 2010 World Cup to fix prices even though it was a customer of said companies?
You have no freaking clue just how foolish your comments are.

People in the market don't have to act like altruistic angels. That is the whole point. But even with profits Voluntary capitalism is not exploititave. It is cooperative. Read I, Pencil that I linked to.

Gray Falcon I mean this literally- you do not understand economics. Pretty much everything you have said has been a misrepresentation.

My libertarian sources are academic economists. Milton Friedman and Hayek won the Noble Prize in economics (which Noble himself greatly opposed because economics is not a science) explaining these basic principles of the market. You are guided by political ideology.

Your link sounds like it was written by a high school kid.

But even with profits Voluntary capitalism is not exploititave.

Really? So the Bangladeshi sweatshops mentioned above aren't exploitative? Manufacturers colluding to drive up the prices of goods and services aren't being exploitative?
I said before that you have no freaking clue just how foolish your comments are. I now wish to amend my comment.
You have no freaking clue full stop.

Delysid, I agree with you on one point. Economics, as it currently is, isn't a science, in the same way the balancing the humors isn't science. If I do not understand economics, then that is because I live on planet Earth, not the world where economists come from.

Sadly, I just finished reading 'I, Pencil', as recommended by Delysid, who promised it explains how the free market works. Perhaps I have missed something, but It strikes me as one of the dumbest things I have ever read. It starts by claiming that no one knows how a pencil is made, which is obviously untrue. What is meant by this, it transpires, is that no single person knows everything involved in producing all the components of a pencil:

None of the thousands of persons involved in producing the pencil performed his task because he wanted a pencil. Some among them never saw a pencil and would not know what it is for. Each saw his work as a way to get the goods and services he wanted—goods and services we produced in order to get the pencil we wanted.

But clearly someone figured out how to make pencils (Simonio and Lyndiana Bernacotti in around 1560 as a matter of fact), various other people improved upon the design and someone else decided to set up a pencil factory, with the purpose of making and selling pencils, including the eponymous pencil purportedly writing this essay.

Even in the absence of pencils, people would still mine graphite, grow cedars and produce the other raw materials for which there are other markets. Surely the author cannot be suggesting that pencil factories and pencils arose spontaneously, that would be preposterous, yet I read:

There is a fact still more astounding: The absence of a master mind, of anyone dictating or forcibly directing these countless actions which bring me into being. No trace of such a person can be found. Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.

No we don't. We find a person who figured out that encasing graphite in wood might be a useful way of making marks on paper, and then used raw materials that were already available to do so. The Invisible Hand didn't do it, people did.

The lesson I have to teach is this: Leave all creative energies uninhibited. Merely organize society to act in harmony with this lesson. Let society’s legal apparatus remove all obstacles the best it can. Permit these creative know-hows freely to flow. Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed.

What a weird non sequitur. How does any of this follow? How would regulating the market have prevented anyone from inventing and producing pencils?

I can only assume I have missed something in this essay of which the introduction states:

[...] this little essay opens eyes and minds among people of all ages. Many first-time readers never see the world quite the same again.

Perhaps Delysid could explain what I have missed or misunderstood.

So Delysid trots out a Wiki reference to legislation, not regulation. Delysid also seems blissfully unaware of the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant, which has been successfully storing a great deal of U.S. defense-generated nuclear waste for years now. Not to mention Delysid can't seem to differentiate between the effects of a nuclear accident and the current storage of nuclear waste.

You haven't quite earned a gold star yet on this topic, Delly old chum.

Delysid:

Read I, Pencil to understand how the market works.

I, Pencil:

Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed.

As I said above, Delysid, your worldview is a religion; your own source confirms this. You do remember this is a skeptic blog, right? Don't you understand that the proper skeptical response to the claim in I, Pencil is prove it?

@ Delysid:

"I do not want people like Tim Gietner of Goldman Sachs as Sec. of Treasury."

You, of course, have a link to Tim Geitner's employment record at Goldman Sachs?

Tick tock, tick tock, only five more days until your pals at the Tea Party fail to raise the debt limit and your nice cushy taxpayer-paid education loan interest rates go sky high.

Cheer up, there's always taxpayer-paid food stamps and someone must need some toilet pulling, Tidy Bowl Boy.

#883 Like I said: There's no need to argue with Delysid. He has read his Book, had a conversion experience and says evidence wouldn't change his mind.

He has faith in the Invisible Hand.

Saw how on The Learning Channel's "How Things Are Made". (Mr Rogers did crayons.)

(Mr Rogers did crayons.)

And it was the best thing ever!

Apparently LSD has never read Petroski, either.

Khani

There’s no need to argue with Delysid. He has read his Book, had a conversion experience and says evidence wouldn’t change his mind.

He has faith in the Invisible Hand.

QFT

It is clear that for all his claims that we are the ones ignorant about economics, Delysid hasn't taken a single course in economics or he would understand how the "Invisible Hand" like any negative feedback loop can lead to cyclical price swings. Even a first year micro economics course covers these things in far more detail than his simplistic understanding. He rejects utilitarianism in favor of ideological purity, forgetting that Adam Smith was a Utilitarian philosopher. He reminds me of those hapless Christian Fundies who wander into militant atheist fora like Pharyngula assuming the denizens are unfamiliar with bible and only need to shown "the light", completely unaware that many of them deconverted once they actually read the bible. As I said before, for his ilk "The Wealth of Nations" is like the bible, you are supposed to worship it, not read it.

After the sub-prime crash, Michael Shermer became an embarrassment to the skeptical movement with his free market fundamentalist insistence that the sub-prime crash was not the inevitable result of de-regulation of the banks, but was rather the fault of regulation. Neither socialism or capitalism will work without a recognition that unethical people will figure out a way to game the system. Freeloaders will game the former and thieves in suits will game the latter on a much grander scale.

Delysid, something you should know about science. If a hypothesis’s predictions fail to match up with the real world, that hypothesis is discarded.

He tipped his hand on this front well before the Word of Power (which D. apparently holds in such superstitious awe that, as a mirror image of dirt-common Tetragrammaton, it defies even the making of inferential statements) oozed forth:

The whole point of the climatology ‘controversy’ is that humans are playing a major role in the system. This means that human action throws in uncertain parameters. It is more similar to econometrics than some people are admitting, in my opinion.

This was proffered, apparently, in the expectation that whatever the hell D.'s amygdala happened to beaming to the Realm of Mind about econometrics must represent a sharp resonance peak when transformed to the Group Domain.

I nearly remarked about it, because I had been looking, over the summer, at what James Heckman* (or, more precisely, his lab) was up to. It was a rather refreshing contrast to the vibe I had gotten a while back that the presence of Computer Modern was a sign of Much Pondering in certain circles, or something.

D. can't handle this. It's messy, and his talent is superficial memorization. Why do you think he wishes he could "drop out of school and work for private dentist as an apprentice for the remaining 18 months[**] of dental school and get my degree, as a message to the world that I am competent"? Or is incoherently complaining about the bits of what is only intelligible as part of a practicum, if that?

It's not translating. Despite lip service to "private governing bodies and boards to uphold medical standards," he wants out from the one that he chose. Little does translate, apparently. And when this happens, the standard is supposed to come to him, and not the other way around. Even better, let us fashion a simulacrum of an inhuman force. They're more docile, right?

My books are still largely packed. As a consequence, I've learned that one H. Peter Kahn was the inspiration for David Grün in Been Down So Long. Poor D. is yet stuck with Calvin Blacknesse.

* Also a recipient of the "Noble [sic] Prize in economics [sic]"; I've yet to figure out how D. arrived at the conclusion that Alfred Nobel "greatly opposed" this, as though there were anyone to argue with about it at the time, but this may be a function of working with nonnative authors who have a better grasp of English.

** Eighteen? Aren't these curricula structured by year?

Is Adam Smith the official spokesman for free-markets?

Adam Smith had some interesting ideas, but like Sigmund Freud, many of his ideas (like the THE INVISIBLE HAND) have since been abandoned.

Attacking libertarianism through Adam Smith, who died in 1790, is about as ridiculous as attacking Ayn Rand. Just because they contributed to classical liberal thought does not mean they are infallible perfect representatives of the ideology. Attacking an 18th century philosopher who promoted free-markets combined with blatant fallacies is no different from an alternative medicine quack attacking an 18th century physician who advocated ideas such as ether. There have been advancements in the fields in the 250 years.

Support of the free-markets is in no way similar to belief in a religion. We are the market. The market (in the US at least) is made up of 300 million individuals using free will to make decisions. This is not central planning by a handful of elites and it is not supposed to be.

God dammit this is so frustrating. I don't adhere to a belief in an "invisible hand." I've never heard a libertarian even use this phrase. It is statists who keep repeating this concept.

Keynes used the term "animal spirits." Am I relentlessly attacking animal spirits like this is a concept all of you agree on?

Thomas Jefferson is one of my intellectual heroes, but he owned slaves and as president intervened with the government in various affairs. I disagree with these actions despite vehemently supporting the vast majority of his philosophical and political science writing.

Does this mean every libertarian supports owing slaves because Jefferson did so?

Hypocritical behavior by individuals does not invalidate the principles of classical liberalism/libertarianism.

Also no two people are in total agreement about everything. I am a huge fan of Ron Paul, but I openly disagree with him on several topics (particularly vaccines and evolution and recreational drug use). This does not invalidate his other points or the voluntaryist ideology.

Attacking an 18th century philosopher who promoted free-markets combined with blatant fallacies is no different from an alternative medicine quack attacking an 18th century physician who advocated ideas such as ether.

There are two possible decodings of the payload of this mess, and neither works out well for you.

Delysid,

God dammit this is so frustrating. I don’t adhere to a belief in an “invisible hand.” I’ve never heard a libertarian even use this phrase. It is statists who keep repeating this concept.

Then why did you ask us to read 'I, Pencil' as an explanation of how the free market works? The entire thesis of the essay is that an 'Invisible Hand' guides the market:

Instead, we find the Invisible Hand at work.[...] Have faith that free men and women will respond to the Invisible Hand. This faith will be confirmed.

Yet now you tell me you don't believe this? Someone here is very confused, methinks.

Incidentally, I think the very concept of an ideology suggests an end to thought, the rejection of anything that does not fit with the ideology and a blind adherence to the ideology regardless of the consequences. It is a religious concept, based on dogma and 'Holy Writ' and is incompatible with reason, in my opinion.

I thought the invisible hand was a very serious offense until I read Adam Smith.

And Militant Agnostic nails it.
,

Neither socialism or capitalism will work without a recognition that unethical people will figure out a way to game the system. Freeloaders will game the former and thieves in suits will game the latter on a much grander scale.

Delysid fails to realise that we have laws, monitoring authorities and penaties for breaches for a reason.

Delysid referring to "the invisible hand".

I’ve never heard a libertarian even use this phrase.

You need to get out more.

The dogmatic insistence that the "Free Market" always results in a better outcome and that the government can not do anything well in spite of evidence to the contrary is indistinguishable from religious fundamentalism. There is also the loaded language you use to "other" heretics who question your dogma.

That's a point I tried to make earlier when he stated he didn't have solutions but trusted others would come up with them. Other people already have, in the form of government laws and penalties.

#891 ... uh, "the Invisible Hand" was in the text that *you* told us to read.

Your exact words: "Read I, Pencil to understand how the market works."

The text postulates that the market works via the "Invisible Hand."

If you don't believe that the market works via the "Invisible Hand," why did you tell us to read the text "to understand how the market works"?

@ Militant Agnostic:
@ Narad:

I haven't been commenting much here because the thread is getting too long to load within a reasonable amount of time which doesn't integrate well with my schedule- so I'll be brief and then , off.

I have to say I'm in agreement- esp about Shermer, education, etc..

Say what you will, schools of economics put forth hypotheses which we can TEST in the real world and computers make this so much easier.

Something happened in 2007-8 that has led for some unimaginable reason ( heh) , to a resurgence of Keynesianism. I wonder why?

I don't believe that the Nobel committee only awards prizes to one particular school of economics. Recently there was that fellow Paul from Princeton.

See, now I've gone and done it- mentioned two *betes noires* of D's in a single post.Who's the third? Anyone?

Still waiting for your to cough up Tim Geitner's employment record at Goldman Sachs....Tidy Bowl Boy.

The little editor of Autism Investigated has a new post up...again attacking Mark Blaxill and defending the Geiers and Wakefield. Comedy Gold!

"Mark Blaxill's Early Interference in Omnibus Revealed"

Link to Jake Crosby's latest rant about Mark Blaxill:

http://www.autisminvestigated.com/mark-blaxill-autism-omnibus/

Will Ginger Taylor intervene to defend Blaxill?

Will Jake dredge up some more private emails?

Has Jake deep throated Bolen with more of his investigative journalism?

Stay tuned for further developments.

@lilady - of course, AoA created the monster, now they are reaping what they sow....good for them (sarcastic chuckle).

@Denise

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/niall-ferguson/paul-krugman-euro_b_406073…

The invisible hand is just a metaphor. I think it is a crappy because of religious connotations. Remember Smith coined this term in an era where rejection of religion was a serious social offense. I believe the "invisible hand" is meant to appeal to theists.

It doesn't change the fact that markets are self-regulating, but I have no desire to defend the metaphor. As several pointed out, I, Pencil does defend the metaphor, but it is still right in the explanation of capitalism and markets. Also, modern libertarians rarely use the term 'invisible hand.' It is used far more often disparigingly by critics of free-markets than by defenders.

I confused Henry Paulson with Timothy Geithner.

Henry Paulson was CEO of Goldman Sachs before Secretary of Treasury. My point still stands about regulatory capture. In the eagerness to point out this mistake did anyone stumble upon the Paulson and Geihtner relationship and conveniently remain silent? I'm guessing so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_Paulson

Just go away Tidy Bowl Boy. You confused Tim Geitner with Hank Paulson, which seems to be a pattern with you, since you first arrived at RI spreading your manure.

Goldman Sachs, for those who work in finance, is otherwise called Government Sachs, because of the cozy relationship between GS and the Treasury Department.

@lilady

I really hope you don't think that you said anything intelligent or made any rational points.

Ginger Taylor makes better arguments against vaccines than you make about politics.

Thomas Jefferson remarked that he supported women's suffrage, but after living in France and hearing the nonsensical gibberish of the women in Parisian salons talking about politics, he admitted that they weren't ready yet.

One of those women must have been your ancestor.

Delysid, you do know that by resorting to outright misogyny, that you're pretty much conceded that lilady's correct? If you had a real counter, you would have used it. Instead, all you can do is give us insults that might have been considered clever in third grade.

Just stating the facts.

It was men who ended the American Republic by ushering in the tyrannical Progressive Era (Prohibition, Income tax, WWI, federal segregation, et cetera) by voting in the pseudodictator Woodrow Wilson. Ironically women's suffrage was one of the only pro-liberty achievements in that Era.

All hail the mighty penis.

Nope. No French heritage at all. My brother-in-law was born in Ohio. Does that count?

I made my points up thread, before you decided to entertain us with your wacky Paulist anarchist politics and your totally ignorant views on the economy.

Delysid:

Thomas Jefferson remarked that he supported women’s suffrage, but after living in France and hearing the nonsensical gibberish of the women in Parisian salons talking about politics, he admitted that they weren’t ready yet.

Firstly, citation needed. You have made some rather questionable claims on this forum.
Secondly, I'd like to point out that in those days, educating females wasn't really the done thing.
Thirdly, ever heard of Queen Elizabeth?

If we hit 1,000 comments, Orac gets a new pony, right?

Or is it free first-class airline tickets? I can never remember...

It doesn’t change the fact that markets are self-regulating, [...]

I can think of a number of things that are self-regulating, mostly in the human body since that's an area I have the most knowledge about; pH, temperature, blood pressure, blood glucose, blood electrolytes etc.. In every case I can describe the mechanisms involved and how they work, for example buffering and respiratory and renal compensation in the case of pH. All these mechanisms work towards maintaining conditions conducive to the survival and optimal functioning of the organism, because they are designed (in the sense of having evolved) to do so. For example if blood pH falls (CO2 rises), the brain sense it, stimulates respiration, more CO2 is exhaled, and pH rises again - that's self-regulation.

I can see how a 'free market' can lead to Pareto Efficiency, but what are the homeostatic mechanisms that self-regulate the market towards a state that is beneficial to all? What monitors the well-being of the people in that society? What feedback is there from a poor person who is being exploited, starved or dying of illness that would stimulate the free market economy to make conditions better for him?

I can see no reason why a free market economy would not end up with a few rich people exploiting everyone else by paying very low wages, as has been the case in the past and still is in many parts of the world. We could rely on the consciences of the very rich, as in Victorian times, to prompt them to do philanthropic good works, but that doesn't seem very practical to me. It was only the development of trade unions and the passing of various labor laws that ended the miserable conditions for millions of people in the 19th and early 20th century in Europe and the USA. The idea that abolishing these hard-won regulations would somehow liberate people seems utterly nuts to me.

I continue to see parallels between antivaxxers and libertarians. Antivaxxers look at the relative absence of contagious diseases in the developed world and assume this is how it would be without vaccination, but without any side effects of vaccines, not understanding that the current state of affairs is largely due to mass vaccination. Antivaxxers accuse those who support vaccination of being brainwashed Big Pharma shills who was unable to think for themselves.

Libertarians look at the relative lack of crime, labor exploitation and corporate malfeasance we see in the developed world, and assume this is how it would be without government, but without any of the negative aspects of government, not understanding that the current state of affairs is largely due to government. Libertarians accuse those who are in favor of having a democratically elected government of being brainwashed progressives, liberals, socialists, liars, or "retards" who are unable to think for themselves.

I meant, "brainwashed Big Pharma shills who are unable to think for themselves". obviously.

@ Scottynuke:

"If we hit 1,000 comments, Orac gets a new pony, right?

Or is it free first-class airline tickets? I can never remember…"

Wrong. Orac gets a pair of tickets behind home plate for Wednesday night's Tigers-Sox game at Comerica Park. Go Tigers!

Also, modern libertarians rarely use the term ‘invisible hand.’

Naturally, you have undertaken a methodologically sound survey of the literature to quantify this assertion, right? Oh, wait, you think Marie Curie was a work-at-home mom. Perhaps you could start by defining your inclusion criteria.

Delysim, aka DullardSimp:
"Thomas Jefferson remarked that he supported women’s suffrage, but after living in France and hearing the nonsensical gibberish of the women in Parisian salons talking about politics, he admitted that they weren’t ready yet."
I think we can see Jefferson's view of women's rights when you remember that because his wife's half-sister had a black grandparent that it was okay to receive her as a gift from his father-in-law, who was also her father, keep her as property, and himself father children with her who, like their mother, had all the same rights as cattle, with the exception of not being butchered for the table. You claim to be opposed to his holding of slaves, but can't see his slaveholding to be part and parcel of his views on women, i.e. that some human beings were inferior to others and could be treated as chattels. How far, do you think, were his views on property influenced by his fear that others would interfere with the property that was his personal sex toy?

I just rechecked my facts about Jefferson and Sally Hemings. Jefferson and his wife inherited her mixed-race half-sister, so she wasn't a gift. He also treated their six children well, raising them in his house, and oh-so-kindly "granting" them their freedom (which should never have been his to decide on, and that solely from the facts of their birth), probably never questioning the propriety of having such power over any human, let alone his own children.

Excellent analogy Krebiozen @ 914.

Also, Libertarians prefer "a pound of cure" in the form of litigation after an externality causes harm over an "ounce of prevention" in the form of regulation. Never mind the nievity about how litigation against the wealthy and powerful plays out in the real world.

Mostly, they are just entitled dudebros whining about how their total awesomeness is not being justly rewarded because of the evil government.

Libertarians also enjoy the municipal services (police, fire protection, our armed forces, the regulatory agencies that protect our food/clean water supply, the availability of 24/7 good hospital care staffed by trained health care worker, using state-of-the-art medical equipment...as well as the safety nets put in place for the indigent out-of-work/out of options individuals in our society....yet they do not want to pay the dues (State and Federal Income Taxes) that actually pay for those services. Cutting to the chase...they are selfish free-riders and parasites, pure and simple.

@lilady

You are delusional. So libertarians, who believe in personal responsibility, are actually free-loaders who want to live as dependent on others? They believe the opposite of what they claim just because you say they do?

The problem is not libertarianism. The problem is that you are (hopelessly) irrational.

Orac, I hope you read through all of these comments.

Your readers, at least the ones commenting on this thread, are every bit as anti-intellectual and delusional as the worst quacks. It's an endless circular argument of statist prejudice and elitism. Just as the quacks have many others reaffirming their superstitions, your readers are cheering on each others ignorance. The collectivism is so deeply entrenched that it infests every comment. Idee fixe.

My work is done here.

@Delysid:

So libertarians, who [claim to] believe in personal responsibility, are actually free-loaders who want to live as dependent on others? They believe the opposite of what they [say they] claim..?

Yes.

The problem is not libertarianism.

True. The problem is human fallibility, combined with libertarianism's inability to deal with that fallibility.

My work is done here.

Buh-bye, and don't let the door hit you on the backside on the way out.

You know, Delysid never did answer my questions about fire codes.

Orac, I hope you read through all of these comments. [...] My work is done here.

Like anyone would read the drivel you have written here and convert to libertarianism? You accuse everyone else of being ignorant, brainwashed and anti-intellectual, yet you can't raise a single rational argument to support your indefensible position. You have posted nothing but ideology, dogma and argument by assertion. Now you claim victory? Pathetic.

It's not a "conversion." It's not a religion. There is no membership. The vast majority of people already live their life as voluntaryists/libertarians.

Stop using (or voting for) the force of the State to rob and control others. Stop being stupid.

Of course I didn't convince anyone here. I'm battling decades of indoctrination and majority opinion. It's painful to confront reality and realize that you are a slave. It's why statists defend the State with such vigorous anger.

Interesting how this thread has gone from discussing the original post (Delysid soundly trouncing Taylor's erroneous beliefs) to libertarianism.

@Delysid

What I find most interesting about your comments is that you accuse everyone else of being Statists and dogmatic, wedded to some sort of "God of the Government" ideology, yet when asked for evidence to support your assertions that libertarianism is a better approach, you provide none. Instead, you invoke invective (they're indoctrinated, stupid, etc.) and react with a great deal of anger (at least, that's the way your comments come off to me as I read them). Why not support your assertion with evidence.

@Todd - I'd still like him to point to a single instance where this has been tried & proven to be more successful (or even as successful) as what we've had historically and currently....otherwise, he's just another theorist, claiming "his way" is better, but offering no proof that it would be.

@Lawrence

Indeed. If I recall correctly, there are instances in modern history that give an example of what happens when there is little, if any, government regulation and the marketplace is left to decide. I can't remember the specific examples, but I seem to remember none of them ending well at all.

What's odd to me about Delysid is that he doesn't seem to understand that Libertarianism is a hypothesis, and that it's completely reasonable for rational people to consider this hypothesis and reject it. He also doesn't seem to understand that there are those of us here, including myself, that are sympathetic to the Libertarian position on several issues.

Delysid, this is not the first time I've encountered the ideas you've presented here. Unfortunately, you are unable to see that you are terrible at presenting and defending these ideas; I've seen these same points argued much more convincingly by people much more intelligent than you, and I'd wager others here have as well. Quoting/plagiarizing other people's arguments may have worked for you as an undergrad, but it doesn't cut it among people who actually engage in critical thinking.

Of course I didn’t convince anyone here. I’m battling decades of indoctrination and majority opinion. It’s painful to confront reality and realize that you are a slave.

What other explanation can you offer for how rational people who've read and understand the ideas you put forward might not reach the same conclusion you did? Do you think that you possess special abilities that allow you to 'battle indoctrination' better than others here? If so, what are these abilities?

vast majority of people already live their life as voluntaryists/libertarians.
I'm battling decades of indoctrination and majority opinion

You're either in the majority or minority, Delysid: which is it?

My experience as a computer programmer has taught me some useful lessons about politics:
1) Complex problems require complex solutions. Anyone who has spent time debugging a Web application knows what leads to thousand-page documents, and it isn't a desire for power.
2) Never say "Nobody is dumb enough to do that." There is always going to be somebody dumb enough to do that. It may be stupid to poison your customers, but some businesses will do it.
3) You can't always simply leave your job. The market for programmers isn't that good, so leaving my job if my employer did something objectionable would not be an option.

By the way, Delysid, if you're having trouble convincing. When someone asks you serious questions about how your free society will function under real-world conditions, your best bet is not to reply with "How do you wipe your own ass?". People don't respond to being mouthed off by a snot-nosed kid especially after asking a serious question.

@Gray Falcon

I'm glad you brought this back up again.

I DEMAND TO KNOW HOW A FREE SOCIETY WILL WORK!

No one explains to me how they wipe their asses without governmentn regulating and controlling the process. If you can't explain to me how you know how to wipe your own ass, then clearly explaining how a free society works is far too advanced.

This is a serious question that I demand an answer to.

If a socialist demands for me to explain how a free society would work for [X] issue. I offered them a rebuttal- how would they wipe their own ass if the toilet paper industry became socialized and then free again?

Would it be CHAOS? Would robber barons charge exorbitant prices for toilet paper? Would gangs and warlords fight over the toilet paper industry? Would you just wipe your ass with sand paper? Or poison ivy?

How would [medicine] work in a free society? How would [fire protection] work in a free society? How would [wiping our own asses] work in a free society?

The burden of proof is on the State. You tell me how it would work.

My answer that "the State has no business wiping my ass. It is my right and perogative to wipe my ass any way I see it."

I don't need scientific evidence to prove that I can wipe my ass better than the State can wipe it for me.

This extremely simple concept seems to be far too sophisticated for the readers of this blog. It's funny, Ginger Taylor undrestands this prinicple quite well.

#926 I'm not surprised you didn't stick the flounce.

If literally no evidence and no reasoning could ever convince you libertarianism is not always optimal, it is *not a rational belief.*

That's fine; I have no problem with having nonrational beliefs, but I do feel they should be acknowledged as such.

My work is done here.

You haven't done any work here, Delysid. You've spent the entire thread avoiding direct questions ("How would your unregulated free market society would deal with the problems posed by the generation of chemical, radioactive and bio-hazardous waste?"
"Given that in even the presence of government ‘force’ (i.e., strong regulation and a judicial system capable of punishing offenders) we observe that people will still behave unethically, what credible evidence suggests people would behave any better in its absence?" etc.) while occasionally admitting that you can't identify actual answers but are confident others will once the free market economy gets going.

It may be stupid to poison your customers, but some businesses will do it.

For some business ventures (cigarettes, for example, or more obviously crack heroin, etc) poisoning your customers might be the most productive business model.

Delysid:
A few questions for you. Try to answer them seriously.
Libertarians talk a lot about "enlightened self-interest". Tell me, who decides what it is? How do we inculcate this in our children, especially if no one can dictate what we teach them? Where is the balance between enlightenment and self-interest, and how do you recognize it?
Is "strict liability" meant to be punitive or compensatory? If the latter, what happens to someone injured and left with extraordinary needs if the liable party has no recoverable assets? If the former, and again without significant assets, where's the punishment? What happens if the strict liability is so diffuse that no one is forced to pay any noteworthy damages? And what about the death of someone without surviving relatives or others to bring suit? How do you feel about inheritance laws, and does death cancel liability?
How is liability determined in the absence of mandatory standards? We know where the fault lies if a builder fails to build to code or if a manufacturer uses banned materials, but if there's no regulation how do we decide among two or more competing standards?
How does your system deal those who use their wealth to abuse others? When does self-interest shade over into cupidity?
What specific functions of government would you preserve? And please don't answer this one with generalities. Name specific things, like meat inspection, weights and measures, hack licensing bureaus, etc.

"My work is done here".

What work? He started a flame war with this statement at # 105

"@ Khani Forcing changes in education in textbooks is incomparably tame to the economic and societal consequences being demanded in the name of climate change.

I despise religious dogma and I am an unapologetic defender of the theory of evolution, but you are lying to yourself. I’ve avoided commenting on Orac’s blog because of some of the political pretentiousness, despite agreeing vehemently with the idea of “science-based medicine.”

Make certain to stick the flounce Tidy Bowl Boy.

Does anyone remember the story of Laker Skytrain? Freddie Laker, already successful in the air freight business, started a no-frills transAtlantic airline - $99 between New York and London - the "better mousetrap". He actually got a lot of business. Did he mop the floor with the competition? Hell, no. The larger carriers with deeper pockets simply cut their fares until Skytrain went bankrupt. As soon as it did, they raised their fares again. They also used their economic and political clout to shut him out of potentially lucrative routes. There's a lesson in there.
How about jeans? Levi's jeans had better quality and lower prices than the designer jeans that came into the market in the '70s. My then brother-in-law knew Calvin Klein, and he admitted that he couldn't make as good a product at the same price. But he had a name and superior marketing, so he sold his lower-quality jeans at a higher price, and so did many of the others. Did Levi's undercut them? Guess again. Levi's struck back with it's own marketing campaign, meanwhile raising its own prices to match the Ralph Laurens and Gloria Vanderbilts of the industry.Imagine - successfully competing by raising your prices. There's a lesson in there, too.

@lilady,

Cutting to the chase…they are selfish free-riders and parasites, pure and simple.

I'm not sure that 's an entirely fair characterization, at least not in every case. People who disagree with government policy do not always have the ability to both reject the policy and not get the benefits thereof (at least not without fleeing the country). One might just as easily argue that those who got conscientious objector status were "selfish free-riders and parasites" because they took the benefits of having military defense while refusing to participate themselves and even, in some cases, protesting the use of the very thing that benefited them.

Out of curiosity, why *don't* they stop using the fruits of government, like the roads, the post offices, etc. etc. At least insofar as it is even possible to do so...

#933 and #934 were Delysid, not me. It was probably an accident. You could probably tell because unlike him, I understand the concept of burden of proof, and that fire and police protection are not even remotely analogous to wiping one's Delysid.

@Khani

Again you are stuck on the nirvana fallacy. At no point did I say a free society will always be optimal In fact, this is impossible for at least two reasons.

1. There is no universal consensus on what is 'optimal.' Every person has a different idea about what is optimal. Some people come to general agreements, of course (like with dosages in pharmacology), but this doesn't mean that one individual (or group) is wrong for deviating from the general agreement of others. How much food does each person require? How much toilet paper should one person use?

Who is supposed to decide this? An elite group of people in some far off city? The only fair way to decide is for each person to decide what is right for himself (or at least voluntarily take the advice of others). Marx tried to justify his collectivism with the phrase "to each according to his need," but again who decides what each person needs? Should it not be the individual who decides?

2. How can something always be optimal? This is not only impossible, it is extremely undesirable for the advancement of society. Imperfection is vital for improvement. It's how we (the market) learns what works and what does not. Some businesses should fail. Some people should fail. Mistakes need to happen. The key is to have a free society so that when something fails, someone else has the opportunity to improve upon it.

This is the greatness of the marketplace of ideas. Freedom does not just mean freedom to profit and succeed. Freedom also means the freedom to fail and lose.

A powerful example of this in my opinion is the concept of "everyone getting a trophy." If every kid on a sports team gets a trophy and wins, how are the losers suppose to get the essential negative feedback to alert them that they need to do something different? How does letting no one fail help society? I know the bleeding hearts want everyone to be given everything, but from my perspective, by doing this, we are actually screwing them from learning essential skills.

George Carlin explains this quite well in one of his last stand-ups.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wFN3CtcYs0Q

Now don't get me wrong, I am not a heartless monster strawman that wants people to die on the streets. I strongly support compassion and charity . I despise Mr. Potter of It's a Wonderful Life.

I just want people to be free to give to the charity that they find important instead of being taxed and having unaccountable politicians making those decisions for them. For instance, I financially support the Innocence Project. I always put money in the firemen boots when they hold events in my town. Others might despise this for political reasons, but I give generously to libertarian think tanks. It makes me happy to support philosophers and intellectualism.

Despite being an atheist, I strongly support the efforts of the Salvation Army, Catholic Church, and Mormon Church. I can't find the video that shows the interworkings of it right now right now, but the Mormon Church has an unbelievable charity system.

I'm not going into dentistry just to profit. I want to help people. I enjoy treating people. I'm planning on not charging patients for dental work once they reach 80-85. I would definitely accept a pie as payment, and from what I have heard from physicians and dentists who do this, patients are happy to do such things and will do it voluntarily so they don't feel like a charity case. When we did a medical mission in Ecuador we charged every single person 5 dollars. It wasn't to make a profit, but because it is offensive in that culture to treat them as helpless. This to me is true charity.

I see kids with mouths full of caries and I just feel sad. It's not their fault and they don't have means to support themselves. I want to help them and I'll do what I can. My family dentist was so kind to me growing up (and gave me a bunch of free things) and he inspired me to go into the profession.

But I despise Head Start. I resent being forced to participate in that program. It is not because I am a heartless greedy libertarian who hates children, but the opposite. I strongly believe it (and most, if not all government redistribution programs) is a wasteful misuse of resources that screws children and the adults trying to help them.

All of this to me is libertarianism. It's people helping other people without coercion. There will always be some people in society who are heartless and greedy and give nothing back. Screw them. Let them keep their money and live in their own misery. It's not my right to tell them how to live.

Also I should add that my family dentist didn't just "give me free things."

He and I played hundreds of hours of tennis. I was 10 years old and pummeling him. I didn't totally understand it at the time, but tennis was my way of paying him. In retrospect I understand I understand the relationship.

Delysid, we're not asking for a free society to be optimal, we're asking for it to be adequate. The fact remains that so far, you've shown it isn't, especially if people like you are involved.

@Old Rockin' Dave

Thank you this is the first time you addressed me cordially. I'll try my best to answer those questions.

"What specific functions of government would you preserve?"

If I could choose a government, it would be the American government under the Articles of Confederation. It wasn't perfect, but it was the 'best' government that mankind has attempted so far. The American Republic founded after the Revolution under the Constitution was decent, but it had too many flaws and failed to restrain the Federal government. A major problem was Andrew Hamilton's role in making a "strong" federal government, but compared to the political climate today, Alexander Hamilton was a libertarian.

The main function of government I would preserve would be a court system that upholds common law. This is not my area of expertise. I will differ this to Murray Rothbard, who explains it much more eloquently than I am capable of.

Please read Law, Property Rights, and Air Pollution by Rothbard. It gets into several of the questions you posed to me about liability.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/1970/01/murray-n-rothbard/real-freedom-and-j…

If you sincerely want insight into my political beliefs, please watch this series History of Liberty narrated by Andrew Napolitano.

History of Liberty Part 1 (The Original Tea Party): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y25RbOLD4Mo
History of Liberty Part 2 (The Civil War and Gilded Age): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qP2YYsq3cs
History of Liberty Part 3 (The Progressive Era): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7k2Lp7YQ9N0
History of Liberty Part 4 (FDR's State and LBJ's Great Society): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pa0ptTOG9I0
History of Liberty Part 5 (Big Govt and Tea Parties): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6Cm3Hz9GlI

I don't think I answered all of your questions (particularly about inheritance), but let's start here.

Delysid... please stop attempting to change what has actually occurred.

My question was "What sort of evidence would convince you that libertarianism does not always offer the optimal solution?"

You answered "You won’t change my mind about libertarianism with “evidence” because I don’t view politics as a science."

That was your answer. Now you want to change your answer because you don't like the term 'optimal," whereas the original question did not hinge on the meaning of the word "optimal," and would have, in fact, allowed *you* to define the term optimal for the purposes of the question.

But you didn't. Instead, you answered the question.

Now that you see that your answer had logical consequences, such as showing that your point of view is not rational, you want to take it back and start over.

The question was asked 507 comments ago and only *after* the consequences do you want to go back and start over with your answer. What would a libertarian do at this point?

Allow you to start over and try to sell your idea all over again, or just remind you politely that you lost, and encourage you to move on?

You already answered; you had no problem with the word "optimal" when you did (in post 722), and 224 comments and *a whole week* after you gave your answer, and showed yourself as irrational, you now want to take back your answer and talk definitions.

Maybe I am a libertarian after all.

You have clearly shown that your position is irrational. I encourage you to move on.

@ MO'B: "One might just as easily argue that those who got conscientious objector status were “selfish free-riders and parasites” because they took the benefits of having military defense while refusing to participate themselves and even, in some cases, protesting the use of the very thing that benefited them."

Free riders don't want to pay their Income Taxes which are budgeted for any services, including the military, police and fire protection, infrastructure, public schools and military and civilian hospitals...a far different scenario than claiming conscientious objector status.

Should I refuse to pay the 65 % of my sizable property tax bill which pays for the public schools in my town? I haven't had a child in school for the last twenty years. Do you think that educating children through high school is the responsibility of every American...even those who are childless?

When we decided to send my daughter to a private high school, we didn't ask for, nor did we expect, a school tax rebate. We voted to pass the public school budget each year while paying private school tuition and continue to this day, to vote to pass the school budget each year.

Now we have Ron Paul, who, during one of the Republican Candidates public debates (the one sponsored by the Tea Party), said let a (hypothetical) young accident victim die, if he didn't have health insurance. In Ron Paul's world "the churches, the charities" would provide hospital and medical care. That's a doctor? That's a man who should be elected President?

@Khani

I'm not going to stop using roads because I pay my taxes and for the time being they are my only means of conducting business. Using the roads does not make me a hypocrite, nor does it invalidate my arguments.

I am far from an Ayn Rand fanboy (in fact I've only read one book of her's, Anthem, and I couldn't even give a summary of it) but she is often attacked for accepting Social Security for this reason. By her logic, which I agree with, is that the money was taken from her by force, and by accepting Social Security she was just getting back what she already paid into. Some libertarians disagree with this mindset, but it is rational and logical. Personally I agree.

Ron Paul is often attacked by Democrats and other enemies for hypocrisy for campaigning for Federal spending in in his district, but by the same logic he was returning money to his constituents that was already taken from them in Federal taxes. This is completely consistent ideologically and legally with everything he said and did in his career in Congress.

I use federal student loans for dental school because there are no realistic other options with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve in such control over the system. This does not mean I agree with the system and does not make me a hypocrite.

I will pay for my state license and use it to practice dentistry even though I disagree with state licenses. Again, I have no other choice.

It is literally impossible to completely separate yourself from government, positive or negative. I vehemently disagree with the existence of the TSA (and the department of Homeland Security), but I fly on commercial planes and subject myself to molestation in the security process.

If a slave relents and eats the food his master gives him, or lives in the shelter, or does the work, it does not validate the system or means he agrees with it. The punishment for openly defying the government authority is always death or imprisonment.

http://www.christophercantwell.com/2013/09/16/the-penalty-is-always-dea…

@lilday

Income taxes don't pay for military, fire, or police, You are dead-wrong.

Do you even know what income taxes pay for?

Do you know the history of the income tax?

Have you ever seen America: Freedom to Fascism?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uNNeVu8wUak

@lilady

You are smearing Ron Paul about charity and you have no idea what the hell you are talking about. The man embodies everything great about medicine.

This is a political ad from a PAC but it doesn't even matter. There is no reason to doubt this story is anything but true.

The compassion of Ron Paul http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Rv0Z5SNrF4

You misrepresented his comments in that debate in an extremely dishonest way. The man practiced medicine before Medicare and Medicaid and the HMO Act of 1973 and did tons of charity work. "We never turned anybody away."

Ron Paul GOP Debate w/ Wolf Blitzer http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8T9fk7NpgIU

Ron Paul Texas Straight Talk: In praise of private charities. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=idLDz96LgCQ

Expanding on what lilady said at #948:

In Ron Paul’s world “the churches, the charities” would provide hospital and medical care.

In the Dark and Middle Ages, church charities were the main support for the indigent, disabled and sick. It was an early form of the welfare state. But tithes were paid to the church by most people, so the church could afford to be charitable. I can't really see the difference between tithing (which in many cases WAS mandatory) and taxation.
As for Delysid:

Income taxes don’t pay for military, fire, or police, You are dead-wrong.

Really? Then what pays for the military?

Have you ever seen America: Freedom to Fascism?

Argument by youtube? You lose.

You really lose Delysid. Can you read a pie chart? Can you read the 19.2 percent slice of the pie for the Military? How about the 8.6 % slice of the pie for "All Other"...which covers "Aid To Localities" for police and fire staffing and equipment?

http://www.concordcoalition.org/learn/budget/federal-budget-pie-charts

Here's your State's Budget Expenditures in a pie chart. How much Ohio State Income Tax do you pay? to support your State and local government services, including fire and police staffing and equipment?

http://www.usgovernmentspending.com/Ohio_state_spending.html

Cripes, you are one ignorant little anarchist when it comes to Federal and State Government Income Tax receipts and expenditures.

@Julian Frost

People still tithe to the church. A church is not a state as long as it is voluntary (as it has been in the US and Europe for the last 250 years), so your point is moot. Why does everyone here keep reverting back to ancient history (Dark/Middle Ages, Code of Hammurabi) and obscure, distant cultures that none of us has experienced (Somalia, Albania Blood Feuds) to discredit my points?

Income taxes do not pay for the military. Julian Frost, are you aware that there was no income tax in the US before 1913 (except briefly during Civil War) yet the US still had a military, police, and fire departments?

Tell me Julian, what do income taxes pay for? I already know the answer to this, so why don't you do some research and educate the others? You and lilady have given blatantly incorrect information, so please correct yourself.

Just because From Freedom to Fascism is on Youtube does not invalidate the points it makes.

It's not some jackass sitting in his basement ranting. Aaron Russo made a professional, well-researched documentary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/America:_Freedom_to_Fascism

@lilady

The Federal Budget and Ohio government budget is not the same thing as "what the income tax funds."

You are so wrong this isn't even an argument. There are hundreds of taxes.

What does income tax specifically pay for?

Delysid:

Why does everyone here keep reverting back to ancient history (Dark/Middle Ages, Code of Hammurabi) and obscure, distant cultures that none of us has experienced (Somalia, Albania Blood Feuds) to discredit my points?

Because they are real world examples. And you still haven't answered how a libertarian society would prevent blood feuds.

The Federal Budget and Ohio government budget is not the same thing as “what the income tax funds.”

And where do state and federal governments get the money to pay for the budget?
From Income Taxes in part.

Income taxes do not pay for the military. Julian Frost, are you aware that there was no income tax in the US before 1913 (except briefly during Civil War) yet the US still had a military, police, and fire departments?

I'd like to remind you that the US military was proportionally a lot smaller then than it is now and that modern military equipment is a lot more expensive in real terms. Also, the fact that there was no Income tax in the past does not mean that Income Tax now does not pay for the military. You could argue that it's not necessary, but that's not what you're arguing.

I'm not certain that the tithing was returned to the people. Have you ever seen the Vatican museums and St. Peter's Church and the bejeweled icons and other precious treasures crafted out of solid gold and encrusted with huge gemstones?

The individual chapels and niches in the Dom Gothic Cathedral in Cologne and Austrian churches have hundreds of relics and entire preserved bodies of saints each clad in gold cloth with crowns made of precious medals with large gemstones.

It occurs to me that Delysid hasn't yet discovered that epiphanies are often wrong. They are convincing, exciting and passion-inspiring, but by their nature they eclipse reason to some extent (sometimes completely).

You are smearing Ron Paul about charity and you have no idea what the hell you are talking about. The man embodies everything great about medicine.

Ha.

Haha.

Hahaha.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Delysid made a funny!

@Delysid

What degree of government regulation of medicine would you say is okay?

#958 These days, it's harder to get away with that kind of thing, one would hope. Especially with Pope Francis.

http://www.abs-cbnnews.com/lifestyle/10/15/13/german-bling-bishop-faces…

Where's the "Like" button for Orac @ #960? :)

Another way companies have used to effectively enslave employees is by paying them in company scrip, effectively forcing to pay exorbitant prices in the company store and live on company land. Of course, Delysid will say that nobody does that this century, certainly not in North America:
http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2008/09/mexico-supreme-court-orde…

@Orac

I must have missed something. Ron Paul was a small town OB/GYN who delivered half of the babies in a rural Texas county. For a few years he was the only one in the area. He refused to participate in Federal programs so he treated them for FREE.

Please enlighten me as to how this does not embody the principles of medicine.

http://www.npr.org/2011/10/25/141653000/before-he-delivered-for-voters-…

That article mentions how Ron Paul supposedly told a prospective partner that he had to agree that the practice would not perform abortions.

Since this was 1968 and Roe v. Wade was not decided until 1973, this seems like a giant Duh!
Not break Texas law and risk prison time? Why sure, Ron.

As for their supposedly treating Medicaid and Medicare patients for free, one wonders how many such patients there were in the practice (how many ob-gyn patients would have been eligible for Medicare in the first place?) and how much others were charged to make up for the freebies.

Of course, Ron Paul is an utter dimwit about vaccination, which in itself stains his allegedly sterling medical record.

@Delysid:
I will open your links later, but first a point of fact. My last post was NOT the first time I addressed you cordially. I was polite up to and a little beyond the point where you called me an "asshole". I was also justifiably offended at your "people like you" comment. You opened the door to incivility; you can't complain about it if I walked through it. So while I will look with an open mind at your links, I just want to add one thing: go fuck yourself.
(My apologies for that last to Orac and everyone who is not Delysid. He earned it.)

A bit of clarification for Delysid. I, personally, do not believe that the government is the source of freedoms. One could argue that the natural state of humanity is freedom. However, nakedness is also the natural state of humanity. A republican government is created by people voluntarily giving up more trivial freedoms (the right to stab others with impunity, the right to sell poisonous medicine, the right to force employees to convert to your religion) in order to protect important freedoms. What you propose is ultimately a system where freedom is a commodity hoarded by the wealthy, to be given and sold as the see fit.

@Dangerous Bacon

Hey believe it or not there are people who sincerely believe that performing abortions is unethical regardless of laws.

Ron Paul and I are not in agreement about his belief that too many inoculations weaken the immune system. but he is absolutely correct by opposing mandatory vaccination.

I know ethics are foreign to some of the readers on this blog, but there are some people who still abide by the principle of autonomy.

I can't help but laugh at the self-righteous laziness of the keyboard dictators regarding policies such as mandatory vaccination. It parallels public water fluoridation. "It's too hard to treat patients as individuals and cater each treatment to each individual patient so let's just dump a medication into the public water supply. I support mandatory public health measures by voting that way I can sit home and do nothing myself and pretend that I'm such a humanitarian and scientist!"

The authoritarian attitude regarding vaccination, even if well intended, has resulted in predictable blowback. People do not like being told how to live.

Also, you are wondering if Ron Paul really didn't treat that many poor Medicaid patients in rural Texas? With some minimal research I found that there are 31,207 Medicaid recipients in Brazoria County. The population has increased since then, but one can assume that there were still many throughout Paul's career, especially as one of 2 OB/GYNs in the county, the other being his partner.

http://county-health.findthedata.org/l/2541/Brazoria-County-Texas

Oh, and since Delysid is no doubt going to say "I didn't voluteer", consider a club with a cover charge, for the purpose of paying the band. By entering the establishment, one already owes the club money, in exchange for use of the club and listening to the band, despite having not agreed to anything. Is this acceptable? Why should one be exempt from paying for police and fire protection?

The Federal Budget and Ohio government budget is not the same thing as “what the income tax funds.”

That is so precious. While in theory there are specific taxes that exclusively fund some specific activities, most taxes go into the general fund and most expenses come out of that same fund. Examples of things that are paid for by trust funds are medicare, social security, and highways. Examples of things paid for by the general fund include the armed forces.

Income taxes go to the general fund.

One thing to note is that this is muddied by transfers between funds. The Social Security and Medicare funds, for instance, invest any surplus in government bonds. As those bonds mature, they are paid back to the trust fund out of the general fund. This means that, in effect, once the expenses from the Old-Age and Survivors Insurance and Disability Insurance trust funds exceed payroll taxes and other taxes earmarked for them, the excess will be paid for by the general fund (initially by redeeming bonds).

One other note - once a tax or fee is collected and enters the general fund (or any other government budgetary fund), it makes no difference whatsoever where that money came from. Money is money. You may choose to believe that your personal taxes are used only for the specific purposes you agree with if that makes you feel better.

@Delysid

I can’t help but laugh at the self-righteous laziness of the keyboard dictators regarding policies such as mandatory vaccination. It parallels public water fluoridation.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but do I understand you to say that government should not add fluoride to the (government funded and maintained) drinking water and should not require vaccination for entry into public (i.e., government-funded) schools? Would you also, then, oppose government removal of fluoride from public drinking water in those areas with naturally high levels of fluoride?

On the mandatory vaccination thing, let me ask you this: if you come into my house, do I have the right to require of you certain conditions before you're allowed to come in?

Delysid @969 – a few questions, or points if you will.

I know ethics are foreign to some of the readers on this blog, but there are some people who still abide by the principle of autonomy.

Since when are ethics synonymous with automomy?

I suspect my concept of what is considered ethical is considerably different from yours.

Second – are you tossing out the gratuitous insults to the general readership of this thread deliberately in order to provoke a response, or is being generally offensive to others part of your way of life?

"I use federal student loans for dental school because there are no realistic other options with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve in such control over the system. This does not mean I agree with the system and does not make me a hypocrite."

Um, yes...it does mean you are a hypocrite. The deferment of your repayments of Federal education loans until you graduate and the low interest rates when you begin paying back those Federal college loans, are because others who pay Federal Income Tax are financing your grad school education.

The Senate came up with a deal so that we don't default...now it is up to the Republican yahoos in the House to sign on to fund the Government operations until January 7, 2014. Tomorrow's the deadline...after that Anarchist, your interest rate on those loans go sky high.

Orac, it appears that this thread will reach/exceed 1,000 comments. I'm having trouble scoring the pair of tickets for tonight's Tigers-Sox game. Perhaps you'd better take the pony//sigh.

Jesus Christ, is this the third time it's stomped off in a huff only to turn right back around?

I despise Mr. Potter of It’s a Wonderful Life.... Despite being an atheist, I strongly support the efforts of the Salvation Army....

I love the smell of irony in the morning, and I'm not talking about their public funding.

No, comrades brothers and sisters, I'm talking about this:

"Just remember this, Mr. Potter, that this rabble you're talking about... they do most of the working and paying and living and dying in this community. Well, is it too much to have them work and pay and live and die in a couple of decent rooms and a bath? Anyway, my father didn't think so. People were human beings to him. But to you, a warped, frustrated old man, they're cattle."

[Banjos]

Take it away, Utah.

(Are you washed in the blood of the lamb?)

People still tithe to the church.

Some people to some churches, yes. Did you have a point?
If people are now still tithing to churches, it's clearly not to such an extent tithing generates sufficient revenue for the churches to provide for all the assistance that state and federal taxes underwrite, since many people still rely on state and federal programs to provide subsidized housing, supplemental nutrition assistance (i.e., foodstamps), that provide health coverage (e.g., Medicaid), job training programs, etc.

What reason is there to believe that things would be any different in your fantasy free market society, and suddenly religious charities alone would be enough?

@lilady

You reminded me of something else I meant to mention. Delysid uses federal loans because there are "no realistic other options". Does Delysid mean they are not willing to get a loan from, say, a bank or private business to fund their education? Why not? Wouldn't that be the Libertarian, free-market way?

Delysid, most of us understand ethics in a different way than you do. You hold an absolutist view, that a specific action is always wrong, regardless of reasoning. Thus, to intrude on one man's freedom by preventing him from enslaving hundreds is morally wrong. We, on the other had, take a more practical approach, recognizing there are specific principles, but that they are not absolute, and the main question is everyone's happiness.

Delysid,

“It’s too hard to treat patients as individuals and cater each treatment to each individual patient so let’s just dump a medication into the public water supply.

I'm alarmed that a dentist in traiing doesn't appear to understand this. Fluoride occurs in the water supply naturally, and areas with a higher concentration have lower incidence of dental caries. Fluoridation simply brings the concentration of fluoride in low fluoride areas up to the naturally beneficial concentration.

How this can be described as "medication" beats me. Is chlorinating the water also medicating people against their will? What about filtering out sewage? Adding folate to flour? Adding B vitamins to breakfast cereals?

Delysid certainly understands fluoridation, but obviously opposes it in order to increase the number of potential customers. Can't have any interference in the ability to offer services on the free market to as many as possible, now can we?

And Delly ol' sod, your ongoing lack of coherent response to the question regarding "onerous regulation of nuclear waste disposal" is duly noted.

Second – are you tossing out the gratuitous insults to the general readership of this thread deliberately in order to provoke a response, or is being generally offensive to others part of your way of life?

My guess? he's throwing out insults in an attempt to distract us, so we swon't notice he still hasn't answered any of our questions regarding how his libertarian free market society would address practical concerns such as workplace safety, exploitive labor parctices 9e.g., child labor), drug and food safety, emergency services (fire and police), healthcare, etc.

“I use federal student loans for dental school because there are no realistic other options with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, and the Federal Reserve in such control over the system.

What "realistic other options" do you believie should operate in lieu of Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal reserve? Or is this another case where you can offer no solution but are comfident some one else ill would up with something even better, if only Fannie Mae etc. were dismantled?

Remember what Delysid said earlier?

If I could drop out of school and work for private dentist as an apprentice for the remaining 18 months of dental school and get my degree, as a message to the world that I am competent, I would do it today.

He probably believes that under his "free society" he'll be able to become a dentist without the proper qualifications. Unfortunately for him, he fails to realize that so can anyone else.

@Gray Falcon

Ah, so he longs for a return to the good ol' days of patent medicine (i.e., snake oil) and hucksters. Let the buyer beware. If they get gulled, it's their own darn fault. Yep, that's healthy.

"If I could drop out of school and work for private dentist as an apprentice for the remaining 18 months of dental school and get my degree, as a message to the world that I am competent, I would do it today."

Hell, he doesn't want to be forced into applying for a Dentist License, even after he completes his education.

He does nerve blocks every day !!!

He could always drop out of his dental program if he doesn't believe in professional licensing and work as a pedicurist or tattoo artist. Oh sh!t..pedicurists and tattoo artists need to be licensed.

He wants to disband the TSA, so that he doesn't have to undergo body screening before boarding a plane. He's willing to take the risk that terrorists won't be targeting his Podunk Ohio home...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0WI4nRIBYDc

Incidentally, most of us, despite Delysid's insistence, acknowledge that the government has flaws that need to be corrected. For example, Delysid himself is an illustration of a critical gap in most public education. Although the teach basic literacy and arithmetic, skills vital for survival in the modern world, they fail to teach another lesson that can be just important in determining one's success in colleges and careers: How not to be a jerk.

@Everyone

Oh my. So many blatant medical fallacies regarding fluoride to correct.

Fluoride is a medication. It is put into the public water supply with the intention of working as a medication. This is different from chlorine, which is a disinfectant. Public water fluoridation is literally mass medication, a direct contradiction to the basic principles of medicine- that medical treatment should be catered to each individual and given with their consent. This is different from food fortification, like ionized salt, which can still be purchased and consumed voluntarily (though there are still grey areas with this, but not to the same extent as public water fluoridation.)

It is an insane campaign. The mechanism of action of fluoride is topical. When the campaign first started in the late 40's, it was thought that the mechanism of fluoride on tooth enamel was systemic, and therefore at least somewhat justified in drinking it. Those days are long gone.

Unlike iodine, which has a natural role in human biochemistry, there is no biochemical role for fluoride. It is completely unnecessary. There is no such thing as a "fluoride deficiency." There is not even a specific mechanism for expelling fluoride salts from the body.

Mass medication with fluoride is quite possibly one of the most indefensible issues unless one outright declares "fuck human rights and medical ethics and common sense regarding the practice of medicine."

Public water fluoridation is a direct violation of multiple segments of the Nuremberg Codes. Nearly the entire United States population has been the subject of epidemiology studies from the onset of public water fluoridation. Most people are completely unaware that they are test subjects. Minimal animal testing was conducted prior to implementing mass medication practices. There are many modals that are medically and ethically superior to putting the fluoride medication in the public water supply, such as toothpastes, varnishes, and rinses. All of these are violations of the tenets of the Nuremberg Code (which fortunately is the law of the Federal Government of the US and the vast majority, if not all state governments).

Dentists and everyone else who supports water-fluoridation are wrong. It is ethically and scientifically unacceptable.

Ron Paul is appallingly (appaulingly?) ignorant about immunization and infectious disease.

"Paul says government “should never have the power to require immunizations or vaccinations.”
The Congressman was asked “If a dangerous disease was spreading like wildfire would you change your view and require immunization in a dire situation?” Paul responded “No, I wouldn’t do it, because the person who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk.”

http://diplomatdc.wordpress.com/2011/02/26/ron-paul-and-the-the-dangers…

A physician with Paul's experience should know the basics of herd immunity - and that when enough people refuse vaccines, dangerous diseases can spread - not only to the deliberately unvaccinated, but to those who can't be vaccinated for health reasons, those too young for shots and those in whom vaccination did not (for whatever reason) result in titers effective in thwarting illness.

Ron's statement (and similar gems) are ignorant enough for the average educated person, inexcusable for someone with his training.

"Delysid uses federal loans because there are “no realistic other options”

...other than doing the ethical thing, embracing autonomy and paying his own way?

@JGC, #977:
If DenySid had his way, I'm not sure the churches would do much good. With taxes cut to the bone or flattened, would there still be an exemption for charitable/religious donations? And would houses of worship keep their tax exemptions?

@lilady

You still aren't getting it. You aren't even trying to comprehend a point of view different from your lunacy. Every comment you makes regarding my beliefs and libertarianism is blatantly wrong. Shame on everyone else for not correcting her. I'll go after people who are spouting blatant insanity on the DailyPaul, yet no one here is saying anything that isn't directed at me.

Guess what lilady, I OPPOSE STATE MEDICAL LICENSES. I don't, however, oppose private licenses. But a private organization should not (and without the guns of the State) cannot stop someone not in their organization from practicing dentistry.

The USPTA is a licensing organization for tennis professionals. Joining the organization and passing their tests is helpful for gaining credibility in the tennis world, but anyone can teach tennis in the market if they don't like the organization. Or they can join the competing PTA organization. Competition does not inhibit the quality of tennis, but the opposite. It improves it.

Medicine needs more competition.

I don't understand what is so hard to understand. It's one thing to disagree, but lilady has demonstrated over and over again to be totally clueless about the principles and arguments for classical liberalism.

People were cheering me on when I challenged Ginger Taylor on her misinformation. Now where is my support when I challenge the Ginger Taylor of RI, lilady for her flagrant misinformation? Does the mob not self-evaluate?

@Old Rockin Dave

I think it's great that religious organizations are exempt from taxes. The problem is that everyone is not exempt, as they should be.

Do you think you are moral for wanting to impose taxes on others? LOL

Did you really just say that you don't want anyone to have the means for preventing a person from practicing medicine (or dentistry) - regardless of the situation?

So, you'd have no standards whatsoever?

What kind of idiot are you?

Oh yeah, and once again, please point of a historical reference where your "theory" was tried & found to be successful.....

@ Todd W. Why would Delysid do the honorable thing and finance his own education...when he can sponge off the taxpayer-financed Federal education loan programs?

Delysid...Tax protester or tax resistor? (Both types are mentioned in Delysid's favorite YouTube source "Freedom to Fascism"). Every case heard in every jurisdiction has been tossed and ruled as frivolous.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tax_protester

@ Dangerous Bacon:

"The Congressman was asked “If a dangerous disease was spreading like wildfire would you change your view and require immunization in a dire situation?” Paul responded “No, I wouldn’t do it, because the person who doesn’t take the shot is the one at risk.”

Yeah, screw the babies and children whose parents refuse to vaccinate their kids because they are a$$holes who are ignorant about basic science.

Ron Paul is right. Those who are unvaccinated pose a minimal risk to the rest of the community.

Statist progressives can't even get their demands of authoritarianism straight. They oppose homeschooling and then oppose unvaccinated children who would have been homeschooled from attending public school. Which one do you want? Authoritarnism just for the sake of authoritarianism? Government policy is right even when it contradicts itself?

This kind of hypocrisy is what drives me (and other libertarians) nuts. If I seem like a jerk, it is because I have been listening to the same irrational arguments over and over again.

But I'm the one who is hypocritical? LOL

@Lawrence

Are you and lilady related? You both exude a kind of stupidity that seems to me to be genetic.

Do you even read what I write and at least make an attempt to comprehend it or do you just skim it and substitute in your own gibberish strawman?

I SUPPORT PRIVATE LICENSES AND STANDARDS.

I'm not a dictator. It's not my business what other people do.

All hail the keyboard warriors trying to control society through the arbitrary authority of the government.

How would you know a private license has any meaning? There could very well be several private licensing firms, some of them quite prominent, who will sell you one for money, and consumers can't be expected to track them all. This is certainly true for several branches of alternative medicine, where people have gotten licenses for house pets and infants. Why should mainstream medicine be any different?

@Gray - Delsyid can't keep his own arguments straight, much less answer simple questions.

Basically, he supports the same model for "buy-your-own-diploma" education for modern medical practice....yeah, that would turn out really well...

Again, please show us where these theories have been put into practice and found to be successful?

Arguing in absolutes again just shows how hollow his arguments really are.

@Gray Falcon

How do you know who makes the best cell phones? A did a Google search for "best cell phones" and I came up with the following reviews and critics just on the first page.

CNET
Digitaltrends
PC World
TechRadar
Technland

and so on.

I found Orac's blog because I was looking up information about alternative medicine. It's one of the first sources on Google for a good portion of alternative medicine topics.

Mainstream medicine should have more competition with private licenses. This is my entire point. Why should the State have a monopoly on it?

If evidence-based medicine is truly the best (and obviously I believe that this is undeniably true) why would you have any doubts about it dominating the free market?