D-Rex Naptime

Believe me, I get it. Your counter isn't anything I haven't thought of before, as I've once made that justification myself. The solution, however, is shut down the illegal bike store (welfare). You don't outlaw people just because people may commit crimes, just like you don't outlaw guns just because they may lead to gun violence, or drugs, because they may lead to a desperately criminal lifestyle. You use common law. You recognize welfare as theft and you outlaw that action.

Now we are saying that we need more coercion (immigration control) because we already have coercion (taxation for infrastructure, etc.) This is like Elizabeth Warren's argument that we need more socialist policies, because we didn't get rich on our own, being that we drove on roads that everyone paid for, so forth and so on. Furthermore, if we take this logic to its extreme, we would have a great argument for population control. Be against welfare, if immigrants are taking your welfare. Be against taxation, if you feel others are freeloading off of your subsidization of infrastructure. Just don't capitulate to the notion that coercion is justifiable against those who have not aggressed against you. Simply moving to a space is not a violation in its own right, unless you concede to the notion that the land we share is legitimately owned by the government, and by extension, "us." If you make the argument that "we" own this public space, you are therefore morally validating the government's right in taxing us for the public good in the first place. To come back to your bike predicament, the bike is still yours. However, if you aggress against the beneficiary of the bike (immigrants) vs. the person who actually stole your bike (the government), you exonerate the actions of the true aggressor.

Admittedly, I have not read all the replies yet. I just need to get this off my chest though... I just listened to a Podcast call in show where Stefan made the case for liberty on purely moral grounds. This comports with all arguments I'm used to hearing from Libertarians, Anarchists, and Stefan. On this one issue of immigration, we suddenly become consequentialists. Why? Don't get me wrong, I've made cases against immigration myself, but not for more government control over it. I don't have a reason to disagree with the statistics, but I just think using force in the form of immigration control is wrong. Borders aren't real. We don't believe in collectivism, so why do we now feel entitled to land we do not formally own? We can make the case that since we are taxed by the government, and government owns the land, we should have a say as to whom inhabits that land. However, that is the same argument socialists make to advance socialism, or liberals and conservatives use to ban guns and drugs. There is no end to where that logic will lead. If the collective was forged from force, it does not justify further collectivization and/or force. Last, saying we need to curtail immigration because they'll suck up our welfare is a great argument against welfare, but not immigration. That is like saying we need to have population control because babies may grow up to need welfare. Why is it just immigration we are trying to control when there are many avenues to the welfare state? If it is because of homogeneity and merely having a productive society, I just want to hear it. Are we now "the ends justify the means" people, or are we consistent in our application of the non-aggression principle? l've heard Stefan discuss this with a caller, but he dodged it by saying that guns were pointed in every direction, so therefore it is not immoral to enforce immigration law. That is not true though, if we remove the state gun (welfare) which is what I thought this was about. Please don't misunderstand. I get the argument and I understand that importing votes and welfare seekers may be bad for liberty. I just want to hear someone's take on addressing the moral question alone. Thank you.

This was from a FB debate with some Democratic Socialists. They say that there is no connection to the HUD quotas and the crash included in this argument. So other than Fed manipulation of interest rates, what's missing? An example of a moral hazard would be when HUD directed FNMA and FDMC to increase their balance sheet from 30% to 53% of low-income mortgages. Without FNMA and FDMC buying these up, the banks would have had to write these mortgages at their own risk. Furthermore, investors would have to be more confident in the economic soundness of these mortgages, rather than assuming the soundness on government backing. Sure, Wall Street was squandering in their MBS derivative practices, but this was after Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae had done it. So, you can't hold government harmless. Moreover, through another form of cronyism and cartelization, only certain financial rating firms were designated by the SEC to rate mortgage backed securities. Not very surprising that the ratings were favorable. Going back even further, we see that banks were actually required to loosen their lending standards if they wanted to receive the FDIC and Fed’s approval to conduct certain business activities, such as M&A’s and opening new branches. In fact, Janet Reno outright threatened to sue a bank if they did not loosen their lending standards. To survive the encumbrance of forced financial imprudence, banks had to get creative and provide various lending programs, such as adjustable rate mortgages.

Y'all are brilliant.

All prison terms, sanctions, and so forth are backed by the threat of violence. If you resist fines, or arrest, violence will be used against you. If you further resist that violence, you'll be shot. It isn't that the sentence itself is capital punishment. The point isn't that no force should ever be used in response to negligent homocide, it is whether or not someone consented to the Good Samaritan laws in the first place. If there was anarchy and DROs, the inevestigations into these cases would be costly. They would hope to limo those risks with an consentual agreement and I'm sure being a Good Samaritan, as well as nearly all social and ethical laws today, would find its way into the agreement. Therefore, if you consent and you violate the agreement, force would be justified. If there was no such agreement made between the gawker and his/her DRO then the bereaved's DRO would still pursue an investigation and/or trial which the gawker would have consented to. Of course this doesn't address the dilemma of the gawker not belonging to a DRO at all. If that is the case, then there is no one around to represent the gawker's rights and would therefore be subject to the laws of bereaved's DRO and the investigation would ensue regardless. In other words, if you don't have a DRO, that still would give you license to harm others, even by negligence. It isn't perfect, but it basically roles out just like a civil case today regardless. Anyone want to talk some sense into me on that one?

I was debating a friend once who said that it was unethical to profit from illness. If that were true, no one would ever be cured of anything...we would just "help" people to death. I'm aware of no principle which supports the notion that all care given must be done at the net loss of the care giver. The worst part is that since this conversation, this person considers himself a libertarian, but I'm sure has no idea what it means...has anyone gotten through to these people?

He did a pretty good job on that show. Held his ground well. I liked his bit about police and coercion, but he was out there on some of the rest.

Good video. People forget how much technology has improved our purchasing power and that striving for a higher standard of living is not a zero sum game.

This was my response in an email debate about health care in Taiwan while defending Liberty based principals vs. utilitarian and authoritarian solutions. Sorry for the length. Please let me know what I missed, as I'm only making a few arguments here. Taiwan has implemented a pretty darn good healthcare system, but it wasn’t without its challenges. Furthermore, while a socialized healthcare might be working well on an island of about 22 million people, there are plenty of reasons to be skeptical of a similar plan in the U.S. About 10 years after the implementation of NHI, Taiwan experienced a surge in demand for healthcare and doctor visits. While they didn’t have long wait times, like in Canada, they did have to limit their doctor’s visits to just a few minutes around 2003 – 2004. Taiwan dealt with this increased demand by increasing co-payments. This seemed to work, but it is noteworthy, that while we pay co-payments here in the U.S., it is far less likely to deter over usage of healthcare, as our average income per household is more than double the average income per household in Taiwan. Doctors also had to protest for higher premiums, as they were capped by NHI. The government then raised rates and satisfaction dipped from around 70% to around 60%. This leaves Taiwan with a dilemma of lagging adjustment to changing economic conditions, as raising rates, in the face of increasing costs, would not be a very popular politically. In fact, Taiwan might have to increase their spending from roughly 6% of GDP to 8% of GDP. While this would still be about half of what we pay per GDP in the U.S., is there any reason for us to believe that spending would decrease under a socialized healthcare system in the U.S., when Taiwan experienced spending growth from 4.8% GDP, before NHI, to 6% today and 8% in the future? Now, when we talk about satisfaction ratings, we also have to consider the healthcare environment before NHI in Taiwan compared to today. Moreover, after observing the problems faced since implementation of NHI, such as the very short doctor visits, could we really expect Americans to rate satisfaction as high as 60-70% if these problems existed in the U.S.? Regarding healthcare costs, our satisfaction rating is currently around 20-30%. This disparity more illustrates the differences in service expectations between two very different cultures, rather than providing useful insights into reality. But we could extract this lesson: increasing rates to the public, leads to lower satisfaction. Given that the ACA in the U.S. is likely to add $1.3 trillion to our debt over the next 10 years, according to the CBO, as well as create an almost equally large deficit, I wouldn’t expect the costs borne by the public and the resulting satisfaction rates to improve. While we may take pride in short term victories, such as the $7.4 billion saved by hospitals since the ACA, we forget that this will come at a $72 billion cost to the public in 2015. So, we saved hospitals about $1.5 million each, at a cost of approximately $300 per U.S. adult (this gets higher when considering only tax paying adults). Sorry to derail, but this topic is rather tangential. I suppose this would leave us with life expectancy. To this, I would just again point out the difference in culture, population, and diversity. We have higher homicide rates here in the U.S. vs. Taiwan and a very different history, so we could expect some differences in this area. Not to mention the fact that Taiwan doesn’t subsidize- and therefore make cheaper – the very foods which are killing its citizens; the U.S. has among the highest in obesity rates with the number one killer being heart disease. Yeah, this would add some costs and lower life expectancy for sure. A libertarian solution to the U.S. healthcare woes would be as simple as putting individuals in charge of their own health insurance, rather than having employer sponsored insurance be the norm. This could be accomplished simply by shifting the tax deduction from employers to employees. Naturally, employers would prefer to just pay the employees the money formerly devoted to their employees’ insurance. The employees would then search for the best deals and the competition between insurance companies would lead them to innovate and create better deals for their consumers. Moreover, it is more likely that these employees would choose cheaper packages which cover only the big stuff, like surgeries and severe injuries, rather than using insurance for every doctor visit. This would curtail medical over usage, create more transparency in costs, as well as bring prices down (which would already be lower without the tedious and redundant forms required by government and insurance companies). A plan very similar to this was estimated to increase the amount of people insured in the U.S. by approximately the same amount as the ACA. We don’t hear much about it though, as it is not as romantic as socialization of healthcare costs and doesn’t require as much government.

Madman Person Guy - thank you for taking the time to provide your opinions and insights and thank you also to the rest for your invaluable comments.

Here is a list I found of the top 10 most socialist countries. Oddly, some of these also appear in the top 10 most libertarian. They have elements of both: China Denmark Finland Netherlands Canada Sweden Norway Ireland New Zealand Belgium

Just to give some background, this is what I'm dealing with: "March 20th is the UN International Day of Happiness, and the report published this list of top 5 happiest countries:" 1. Denmark 2. Norway 3. Switzerland 4. Netherlands 5. Sweden http://unsdsn.org/resources/publications/world-happiness-report-2013

Has anyone ever reviewed that data behind the happiness studies and the fact that happiness is rising in more socialist countries? If so, if you could point me in the right direction to find the actual reasons for happiness and higher GDP per capita, that would be great. The study is called the World Happiness Report 2013. Here are the questions that come to my mind. 1 - how they are measured. Politicians will manipulate things like GDP (Boskin Commission) to show improvement. They'll also inflate GDP, as it is used as a denominator to CPI which is used to measure inflation. There is an incentive to make inflation seem lower than it actually is as it is a self fulfilling prophecy. 2 - other legal factors to health care costs, such as cartels which legally keep the cost of medical equipment high, as well as whether or not there is a culture of litigious medical consumers. Also, from my understanding, Taiwan has a similar medical set up as Canada, though Canadians complain about quality there. So we need to look at the differences there. 3 - let's talk about health and weather or not their government subsidizes foods which are unhealthy and keeps the prices of that unhealthy food artificially low which create demand for those foods.

I've actually seen that video before and, like everything I've seen or read on this topic, it merely explains how they want the world to be, rather than how you make it that way. They don't want hierarchal institutions, but to deny an owner of assets, capital, or land, the right hierachally manage labor and production requires policies, or mob violence, in complete disregard for property rights. DROs could never enforce communal ownership of land and production, as their very existence would contradict the rules hey are enforcing. They wouldn't be able to operate without paying based on risk and ability, otherwise they would lose their workers to the those in production based industries, rather than protection based industries. However, you COULD have a community established on voluntary membership and private contracts which espouses the economic principals of socialism and political methods of communitarianism. Any breach of your contract could therefore be enforced by DROs. But the membership would still be voluntary, meaning you could either stay in or join the capitalist outside world, if that is what you prefer. In anarchy, communitarianism could flourish within capitalism, but not the other way around, being that you could not accumulate any land or assets to start your capitalist society within communism to begin with. I would love to hear an anarcho-socialist address these arguments, as I do wish to know more about the concept.

I too brought up these questions in an earlier thread called "Libertarian Socialism." No matter how intelligent the anarcho-communist/socialist, or anarcho-syndicalist, the answer to every question is that they believe in communism or socialism without government. I can never seem to get an answer as to how you develope an economic, or political (for communism) system without central planning and gargantuan government oversight.

This is an excellent example of what actually happened with the western liberty experiment. As long as an institution exists, which has the means of mass coercion, it will become a government and therefore favor businesses and industries which are in their best interest. A possible way to thwart this would be to have multiple institutions, like states, which would compete for the privilege of protecting you. Unlike states, your patronage would not be dependent on your location and it would therefore be much easier to transfer to preferable system with maximum liberty. Does this require central planning? I think not - only anarchy, technology, and the means available to us today that we did not have 300 years ago. On monopolies, perhaps economies of scale might actually lead a sole owner of a scarce resource to sell their raw resources to other businesses rather than producing something out of it themselves. That would maximize profit and minimize work, while also conserving the resource. The pricing mechanism would then create the demand for an alternative, or an adjustment in living standards. As long as people do not direct their dollars to states that favor the owners of this resource, by preventing alternatives from entering the market, there would be no inherent threat which a monopoly would pose to consumers. **this post was in response to Utopian's comment which I quoted a few posts back. Sorry for the confusion, Utopian.

Yeah of course. Socialism can exist within capitalism, but capitalism could not exist within socialism.

A completely agree that anarcho-capitilism is simply just anarchy. The profit mechanism of capitalism requires no central planning. It would just happen, because people would likely trade with one another or steal from one another. Since I will defend myself against theft, there will be a market need for violence used against those who steal (and other crimes). It solves itself. Essentially that is what happened in real life and is how we ended up with governments in the first place - the market need for violence. Since states are essentially corporations, like DROs, that represent your rights, where we went wrong is making your representation of rights dependent upon locality, rather than preference. Also, the states should be the ones paying the federal government, not the people through income tax. Bottom line, anarcho-capitalism isn't that far fetched or much of a stretch from our current system. It simply enhances the profit motive and competivenesd of states, by allowing consumers to easily transfer their membership to another state if they feel their current state is too intrusive.

Thank you, but Chomsky derided anarcho capitalism, saying it would be "tyranny." The man is brilliant, but I feel his theories and philosophies are more rooted in the emotional appeal of equality, rather than reason. I have read and watched bits of his talks on syndicalism, but never have I seen him challenged on whether or not syndicalism is, at its core, a subversion of property rights. In other words, I haven't seen him address a scenarios like the ones above. How do you think Chomsky would respond to the above scenarios? I'm stuck on this, because I'm sure there is something of value, or perhaps an inalienable right I'm not considering.

So does anyone have any idea how equal wealth distribution would be possible without an organized concerted effort back by the threat of violence?

can someone please help me understand libertarian socialism? Admittedly, I get a little frustrated when I research it, because it doesn't seem to address how you get everyone to communaly own rights to production and property without government coercion, so my impatience might have caused me to miss something. So, in the following exercises, could you please explain how anarcho/ socialism, or libertarian socialism might work? **Anarcho-Capitalism**Say, I own a farm. Another person might ask for some food from my farm. I agree to give him some food if he helps me with the farm work. This is capitalism. I still own the farm, because the farm itself was a product of my labor. Any supplemental work done by the helper would be rewarded by food which is the agreed upon trade for his labor, but the farm doesn't belong to him. This is he basis of property rights and capital and is enforced by empathy of the community around me, who recognizes that I should have claim to the farm of my creation. **Anarcho-Socialism**Under this scenario, once I accept the help of another, the ownership is then transferred to him. I too would own it, but only to the extent of my contribution to the supplemental work done on the farm I created. What intrinsic law enforces this arrangement, as it does not seem to be empathy for my situation, as my right to my creation is disregarded in favor of the helper who did not create the farm. All this would do, is cause me to never accept help in exchange for anything. If someone wanted something from me who was not already as economically prosperous as I am, they would have to steal it from me. Seems that this scenario would require centralized power to choose to take from me and give to him. Thoughts on this? I apologize for try form. I'm writing on my iPhone.

I think the mises criticism only applies to a government monopoly of money. If we have competing currencies within any nation, the competitive forces would lead to prudent financial practices and thwart inflation, as you would want your currency to be too devalued compared to others. *wouldn't want your currency....