Andrew79

Ideally you'd need to define what's meant by "rational" first, as what's rational from one perspective might look crazy from another... If people are rational then a free market will work fine. But if they aren't, if people tend to do things against their own self-interest, then you can't afford to not have a free market, because otherwise those irrational people would be trying to control the market, which can only lead to problems. There are only people, there's no super-race immune to the usual foibles we all suffer. To go further, if we make the impossible assumption that the people in charge of a market will be rational, then there's still a problem. Because what's rational for them, getting promotions, raises, etc. goes against what's rational for everyone else. For example, it might be rational for a planner to start a new department because the more people under him, the more money he can make, regardless of the validity of its existence. And once the department's been created it's almost impossible to get rid of, because it's rational for the people working there to do everything they can to keep their jobs (while not being rational for anyone in the market to spend much, if any, time and resources protesting it). That was a bit of a ramble, hope it's clear.

So if there were no governments then the cold war could have ended in global annihilation. You need to think that one through a little more.

To sum the video up: jobs aren't being created because capital is being used to finance efficiency savings, which reduce the amount of jobs, rather than financing innovation, which increases the amount of jobs. So, assuming his theory is right - he doesn't offer any proof for it, it's just his sense that there are less innovations now than there were in the fifties - then he's saying the problem is technological unemployment. He's making the very common argument that the luddites were right...

I'll just add a couple of points I don't think anyone else has brought up yet: "a) All state force and coercion are voluntary because we are free to leave the country. Because we are free to leave and find a new place to live all violence is acceptable. If you choose to live in the United States you are choosing to live in the violence and coercion- therefore freedom." This is a fallacy known as circular reasoning, that is it assumes what it's trying to prove. He's saying you consent to government because you're on its land, but this is assuming government's legitimate in the first place. "d) Government owns the land. Therefore they can initiate force even if you don't agree to their property rules- vehicle tags, prohibition, taxation etc. This is the same for getting trespassers off your property, and workers working for you, operating your equipment under your rules and wages. " This contradicts itself. It's either your property or the government's, it can't be both.

You're wasting your time, the guy's a bullshit artist. For example using Standard Oil as an example of a monopoly is laughable. They massively increased productivity and decreased prices. It was their competitors that suffered, not the public. And if he's so concerned about monopoly why is he advocating for the most dangerous monopoly of all? Social contract? There is no social contract, it's a fiction used to prop up the violence he supports. And it's not even a good fiction because it's a logical fallacy, it's just circular reasoning. And responsibility, again he's having a laugh. How is the state responsible? As Stefan says the state is "free evil" because they have no responsibility. Wasted a few billion dollars here, murdered a few innocents there... it doesn't matter to them, they don't have to care. Responsibility is for the individual not the state. Plus, it's not paying the taxes that gets you killed, it's resisting the enforcers. Fantastic. Sounds like he's having to play word games to convince himself.

The two I can think of are public choice theory and producer capture.

I know, I looked it up before posting. But if you're not going to define what you mean by it, then discussion is difficult as different people could be taking it to mean different things. And I believe my definition sums it up. As you don't agree you need to state what you mean by it otherwise there's little point debating it.

Philosophy is the search for truth. Spiritualty is belief in fantasy. Religion is organised spiritualty, designed to control you.

He's said if someone sees something as being moral, then it is. He doesn't want to see himself condoning immoral actions so he's redefined the term. Putting morality at the same level as good intentions: a justification for actions, rather than a framework to decide if actions are good or bad. Morality doesn't change with society and time, what's normal and accepted will change, but that's not morality. Otherwise he's saying that slavery only become immoral when the state stopped supporting it. That what's good and bad is at the whims of our masters. I think that's close to delibrately blinding yourself from the truth because you don't like what it says, so instead you fall back into the comforting stories of the ruling elite. That was a bit of a ramble, don't know if it'll help you or not.

For an objective, optimum diet wouldn't you have to start with what nutrients the human body needs to function first, and then look at the best way to get them?

Well, I know you feel you understand what you're talking about, but to me, you don't. If you're going to criticize something you need to understand what you're criticizing. Not just turn up on a forum, all arrogant and partronizing, and repeat the most basic objections to anarchy like you're the first person to have thought them up. Anarchists aren't morons, people don't switch from the status quo to believing the best government is no government on a whim. Just because you couldn't think of how it would work doesn't mean that no one else has. If you want to "debunk" anarchy, read up on it (I gave you an excellent recommendation) and then bring your counter-argument. Good luck.

How rude, why be so arrogant to assume that people advocating a position don't understand it? Anarchism is a huge leap from the status quo, supporters seldom jump on board on a whim. It's a common argument. I'd suggest you read Michael Huemer's excellent book "The Problem of Political Authority: An Examination of the Right to Coerce and the Duty to Obey". He starts with the simple assumption that the majority of people believe theft and violence to be wrong and builds the case for anarchy from it. On the way, he takes on, and demolishes, every objection I've come across - including yours.

Stefan's been interviewed a couple of times by Ben: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PxS6FKOGipA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cwet4s07DlU

Except for the sources link [] (Which shows the claim is from the UK Green Party)

Regarding starving children, I'd read Rothbard directly rather than base your views on what someone trying to co-opt libertarianism says: http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/fourteen.asp

A rather disingenuous smear attempt when it is the LVTers who have the Marxist approach to land: The first plank of Marx's communist manifesto is "Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes."

I'm starting with the NAP. And surely UPB says if it's ok for one group of people to value land and collect rent on it then it should be ok for everyone to do the same. If [widget x] uses some of the earth's natural resources - minerals, etc. - that can't be replenished, I don't see the difference. As for monopolies, they thrive under the state, they quickly collapse on the free market. We know that the most efficient way to make use of scarce resources is through a market. You don't even need any theories for this, you can simply watch the state try to provide anything - you'll see shortages, poor quality, and inadaquate supply. I don't see a difference for land. And again, all you need to do is have a look around you to see who causes problems with land, and it's not the free market.

How do you calculate the "unearned" value of land? Who calculates it? Who collects it? How are the calculators/collectors regulated? What does the money go towards? What if someone doesn't want to pay? If the value becomes negative, would the owner receive a subsidy? Are there geographical cut-off points, if so why and how are they calculated? Should the principle be applied to other goods (e.g. my computer used raw materials that are now no longer available for anyone else to use) if not why not? Why is the free market not capable of solving land issues?

A call for the destruction of private property if you don't approve? Sounds like standard lefty nonsense to me, designed to appeal to emotion over intellect. For it to be taken seriously, he'd need to come up with a far better answer to why you should be free to smash up other people's property than because you had "no choice whether you see it or not."

The only problem with collectivism is when it's forced on people. Nothing wrong with people voluntarily coming together to show support for a cause.

Hi Bossi, You did a good job. It didn't need me to do much at all: Why is it that we are herded into the pews, and why is it that we sit through these endless completely boring family dinners, and why is it that we were herded into the stupid little robot rows of public schools and just forced to be so tiny? This is the machine of the world: that we are all crushed into these tiny cubes of self-doubt, self-loathing, controlled, repressed, conflicted, ambivalent, ambiguous, forgetful, impulsive and regretful, regretful and impulsive. Every action we take we question, every action we don't take we chastise ourselves for. Every decision we doubt, every indecision we scold ourselves for. This is the machine of the world, this is how humanity is enslaved. This is the cage. The cage of selflessness. I'm not allowed to have my instincts I'm not allowed to follow my passion, because we are just afraid of being wrong. I mean we are taken from whole sleek mammals and turned into broken constantly turning, sputtering, sparking robots. And we're trying to come back to life and we are struggling and striving to come back to life. But oh my brothers and sisters it is so hard. It is so hard and of course it's hard, because if it wasn't hard, God wouldn’t that be humiliating? If we didn't have to strain every muscle, every fibre... if we didn't have to evoke every Atlas world lifting shred of strength that we could conceivably possess and continue to have to do so day after day... if we didn't have to do that, wouldn't it be ridiculous that humanity were enslaved if the bars weren’t very, very, very thick? Wouldn’t it be ridiculous for us to be enslaved? No. The bars aren't thick, the bars are the world, the bars are everyone. There is nothing larger, deeper, more powerful, more rich, more wonderful, more beautiful, than your sovereign soul and mind... and heart – let’s throw the instincts in as well! There is nothing larger than your judgment. But when somebody puts forward the proposition, there is nothing in their mind that is larger than your judgment, nothing in their mind that is larger than your judgment. And every concept that they appeal to is in their mind not in reality. I mean when you look at how strong human beings are, when you look at how magnificent and powerful we are - when we are free. Well... how strong does the net have to be, to contain the great white? Without a doubt there is a connection between everything that happened in your past and everything that is occurring in your present and, to free ourselves from that we must return and we have to re-experience the past. We have to understand it as it was, not with our stories but as it was - not with our stories. We have to return to experience the past directly, because the stories that we make up to dilute and to dissolve the pain of the past is the prison that we are in. We become addicted to stories for painkilling in the way that people become addicted to morphine to painkilling - with similar results.

The polluter pays because they're committing a crime - they're breaking property rights, the same as if someone stole or damaged your property. As Magnus said, this is the way things used to be until governments, looking for an economic advantage, abandoned it.

I'm not sure I understand this. If I pay for pollution insurance then if there is pollution the insurers pay me and get it back from the polluter. The more pollution, the greater the payout. So the only cost-effective thing they can do is to not pollute. You also might want to comment on his blackmail remark. Remind him he's the one cheerleading for violence against his fellow humans if they don't do what they're told. So the state's overseen massive pollution but it's a libertarian problem? The problem of the commons is purely a state problem, the answer to it is private property. For more detail, Walter Block has a chapter on free market, property rights driven environmentalism in his book Building Blocks For Liberty, it's a good, rigorously thought out read (and it's free): http://mises.org/document/5862/Building-Blocks-for-Liberty

There's a perfect example of that in the "Corporations wouldn't exist without the State" thread: Person B demonstrates he's not interested in honest debate. As you engage people about politics you'll get this sort of thing a lot (most of the time it's not quite as blatant as this). And although it can be hard, the best option is just to move on otherwise you'll just be banging your head into a brickwall. (Typical warning signs of this sort of behavior are people going on about how open-minded they are and how they smart they are, moving onto how they're scientific and pragmatic, while you're religious and dogmatic.) So don't waste your time with them, you'll just end up annoyed with their smug sneering.

There might be a better, less awkward way of putting it, but even if you find a pithy little phrase, you won't "win". They'll find another problem and so on. If they don't accept the principles, your individual arguments will hold no water at all.