Mister Mister

What is ignoble about self interest, greed, and fear? Without those natural emotions, which are essential to evolution, we wouldn't be here. Also, there are other motives of people, like the desire to be accepted and connect with others, the desire to think of oneself as "good", and the aversion to see others suffer. This is part of our biology whether we live in capitalism or socialism. Man IS giving and sharing, to a certain extent, under the right circumstances. But people don't like being stolen from, and having every part of their life micro-managed, which is why socialism is so abhorrent. Free market economics, particularly the Austrian School, a la Mises' Human Action, don't assume anything about human nature, except that human beings act to achieve a particular desire. Deeper motivations, Mises argues, are the purview of psychology, not economics. This recent podcast on the Tom Woods show dealt with this issue, you might find it interesting. You are conceding the point that, in a perfect world, socialism is morally superior to capitalism, just that it's incompatible with human nature. Many socialists actually accept this, they just think they can change human nature through "education". But by conceding the moral argument, and just arguing capitalism from an efficiency standpoint, you are taking the wrong approach I think.

I can't even imagine being Irish and doing hours of slave labor in the fields in the Cariibbean

a free society would incentivize people to have kids under the best circumstances, and parent towards the best outcomes. as far as we can tell, this means not circumcising, not spanking, breastfeeding, and having parents around to form a stable bond with the child and demonstrate good values. indeed, this is the foundation of a free society, not just one mundane aspect of it. why do you bring up this subject?

Lol, I don't even know how to respond to that. All you have to do is look at peoples' sexual behavior before the welfare state. And that was before there were 16+ different kinds of affordable birth control. Again, I don't know how you can call yourself a libertarian, when you think that a decrease in government power will immediately lead to a catastrophe demanding a giant increase in government power. Has it ever occurred to you that your ideas about the future could be wrong?

Don't care don't care don't care, it's still wrong to tell your kids with certainty that God exists, they have Original Sin, and there is a horrible place called Hell where they will go if they are bad

It may be that many intelligent people make a living selling Marxism, but it is stupid people who are buying it.

A hundred pennies are worth one USD. 3600 seconds are equivalent to one hour. Units of currency are arbitrary. I don't even know what it means to sympathize with a fact of this nature. I sympathize that a mile is longer than a kilometer...??? Who said "so primitive and so stupid"? Are you denying that this is true? That culturally and genetically there is no difference between Africans and anyone else?

I really have little/no expertise in these areas, so I hesitate to comment, but when you say you felt it is useless for you to change, I wonder if that is a particular aspect of yourself, related to your history. Rather than fight or resist this urge, or give in to it, I might be curious about this part of you, and why it is afraid of or resistant to change. Is there someone in your past or present life who doesn't want you to change? I hope that helps. Kudos on your hard work and determination.

Thomasio, has anyone ever accused you of being a busy-body? I just can't put myself in the mindset where I care as much about peoples' mundane business decisions as you do. I just do what I am good at, make money, and buy the things I need and want. You call yourself a "left libertarian", but you seem to have as much belief in the competence of free people as your average central planner, so I'm not sure you're really a libertarian at all... One of the things you have to look at about the topic in a larger sense, is the inter-generational factor: what happens when you stop paying low IQ people to have children, the next generation has fewer low IQ people, which might drive up the price of unskilled labor...you could carry on with this scenario in your head but as you see it starts to get very complicated and is impossible to predict. The nice thing about a free society is not having to care

I just don't understand why you would push for political action here, of all places on the internet. How's it been going for you?

Wow your kids are so lucky, I hope you appreciate that. Can you tell us more about this?

I think studies by Elizabeth Gershoff and others, took this into consideration, and found that over time, spanking lowers IQ. But IQ is just one thing. The real negative effects of panking is that it confuses and negatively conditions childrens' understanding of pain, touch, love, authority, and morality. It teaches them to dominate others or to submit to others, rather than negotiate. The Bomb in the Brain presentation covers this very well, and shows how those subjected to corporal punishment, have an exaggerated amygdala response to conflict. Why is it important to you to justify hitting children? I can assume you were hit...what is your relation to those who hit you? Do you have children that you hit?

if you dismantle the 1%, doesn't the 2% become the next 1%? After his policies fail, are they next? Will this just continue, until, as the old saying about socialism goes, we are all equally poor?

I don't necessarily know if either of those things are true. Maybe the "at a distance" part is true, but it should only take a few minutes of conversation to shake peoples' prejudice. In the same sense, if I see a skinny Asian guy with glasses, I might suspect he is very smart, but if after talking to him for a minute, he can barely form a coherent sentence, and thinks his Tai Chi training has given him magic powers, I won't hold on to some generalized belief despite evidence. Only a bigoted racist idiot would, and who cares about what they think anyway? Also, there IS hope for black communities - just look at the great progress they made from 1860-1960 in America, as Dr. Sowell has pointed out. Like I said earlier, there is huge room for improvement in terms of all peoples' choices and cultural values, especially blacks - stop hitting kids, at least less often and less hard, tone down the religious fundamentalism, stop antagonizing black intellectuals, stop going to the government for all your problems, have kids in stable, loving monogamous families, stop abusing drugs and alcohol, stop blaming white people for all your problems, come to mind for starters. After 100 years of these kinds of changes, maybe black communities won't look like Asian communities, but so what? There are also not a lot of great star athletes and entertainers coming out of Asian communities, which is fine if you're not a radical egalitarian. So I agree and respect your commitment to focus on personal choice rather than biological determinism, I just disagree that this information necessarily takes away choice.

I'm not sure how this answers my question - you seem to just be saying that if we organize a strong enough movement of people who advocate for policy changes, then we can affect policy. Obviously this is true, but like I pointed out, far smarter people than you, such as Rothbard, with an organized political movement with lots of people and money and energy behind it, with sensible ideas, have been at this for longer than you and I have been alive, to no avail. This is because most people will act in their own short-term material self-interest rather than listen to reason or act on morality. And this is in America, which in many ways should be the most fertile ground for libertarian ideas. So unless you know something I don't, I can't really see what you're adding here. If I'm wrong, go start a movement and prove it. Are you involved with your sisters' children? Is she on board with peaceful parenting?

Thomasio, do you have some secret to actively change the system into a better one? Because people have been trying to do this to governments for hundreds of years...Do you think you are smarter than Ludwig von Mises and Murray Rothbard and Ayn Rand and Milton Friedman, do you have more resources than political parties, or are you sitting on some secret that no one else has thought of?

Good, well now that we have that out of the way (unless you're being snarky and passive aggressive..?), can we deal with actual moral problems facing us in the world today?

You teach kids to think the same way you "teach" them to walk. You provide support and minor corrections here and there, but they'll figure it out in the long run.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EpDnw4Wevxs Just one video, but I think it's interesting. In a multicultural society it seems people are less likely to deal with moral issues socially rather than legally.

I was just asking about your relation to race and collectivism before, because I think the people for whom this information will be the most difficult, are those who have invested the most in activism against presumably white supremacist privileged society keeping blacks down. Basketball IS a big sport in China, the NBA sells more jerseys in China than anywhere else. The Chinese National team is actually pretty good, but they are indeed at a disadvantage. I just don't understand why this is "crushing". Wuzzums point about penis size and genetics is also really great. I don't really want to argue with you necessarily, I'm just really trying to understand your anxiety about the topic. I don't even mean to say that your anxiety is completely irrational. For example I completely understand your wanting to stress personal responsibility over genetics. But we have to go with the data, don't we? And there is still vast room for improvement in personal responsibility among blacks, not to mention everyone else. I guess I see you as a kind of "canary in the coal mine" for discussing these issues with black people, giving an idea of how someone like you might react to this information...sorry if that sounds annoying, it's just my thinking at the moment. do you maybe worry that if this information becomes widely accepted, that you will be prejudged as being less intelligent?

It is almost always sophistry to assume a person's motivations, whether you say "in my opinion" or not. Race and genetics and IQ is a trendy and appealing position to hold? WTF planet do you even live on? Even within the tiny, fringe, ancap community people don't want to deal with this stuff, much easier to blame all black peoples' problems on the State. But on the other hand, Stef has some Jewish ancestry so he can't be trusted.

Just because a person enters your house doesn't mean you can restrain them against their consent. If this were the case, businesses could just lock you in the store until you gave them all your money. Of course no one would return to that business afterwards. In the same way, if a woman says "stop" after allowing and encouraging a man to get on top of her and penetrate her, he has to stop. As for the road - why is he doing this? Where does he get the resources to do it? Is he building the road by himself? If not, why are construction workers participating in such a ridiculous plot? Don't people wonder what he is doing when building the road? How will respond to him afterwards - won't they ostracize him for being a dick? None of this stuff is that hard, it's completely unrealistic and takes about 2 minutes of thought to figure out. The real question is, what percent of our mental energy should be focused on ludicrous lifeboat scenarios vs. child abuse, religiosity, and statism?

sorry I was trolling, but this is the automatic ancom response I always hear

this is because anarchism is about opposition to hierarchies, and capitalism is the ultimate form of hierarchy, so anarcho-capitalism is not anarchism.

It's not exactly an answer to your question, but I don't think a system of law in a free society would administer beatings or killings as a response to violent crime.