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Posted

In the last call in show Stefan said, that Gandhi could called incompetent, if he didn't know his actions would cause the partition of india.

 

By the same standart, would Stefan call himself incompetent for not knowing the consequences of his actions in Germany?

 

Here it is:

 

On September 22th 2013 there was election day in Germany. The FDP, thed most libertarian party in the parliament got kicked out of the parliament, because you need 5% to get in. It only got 4.8 %. 100 000 votes more would have them brought in.

 

Stefan Molyneux has impact on libertarian circles in germany. For example the leader of PDV, a libertarian party, went to beeing an anarchist by freedomainradio and its german counterpart "freiwilligfrei". Non voting became a trend in libertarian circles. Libertarian circles have about 30 000 members in germany, many of them members of FDP and PDV. These circles were very passive in the election rally, when they easily could organise 100 000 votes extra by campagning for FDP. So Stefan has played a good part in that result.

 

FDP was a member of german government 2009 - 2013 in coalition with the CDU, an opportunististic party, with no own real agenda. Now the government coalition is CDU and Social-democrats, resulting in the first time in german history introduction of minimum wage and a female quota for executive boards of DAX (german DOW). Not quite libertarian.

 

I dont say it is bad longterm. FDP was statist and blocked the anarchists from doing their own thing. But there is a short term impact. So my question is: Stefan, do you call yourself incompetent and if not: do you see the violation of principle by calling one incompetent for not seeing impacts and others not?

Posted

How is it his fault?

 

I don't know, what you mean by fault. Fault implies a wrongdoing of someone, which i didn't accuse him of.

 

Maybe you want to know how exactly Stef caused the FDP being kicked out. I made the case in my first post. If you want specific details ask for them.

 

 

and how is this bad?

 

Well, again here is a missunderstandig. Please read my first post carefully.

 

Stef made the argument that Ghandi is incompetent by not knowing, that his action will cause a violation of NAP by others (here: the indians)

 

Stef himself caused a process, which resulted in a violation of NAP (minimum wage = enforced ban of some contracts).

 

I doubt, that he knew this, so i am asking if he then calls himself incompetent, by holding the same standarts for himself.

Posted

Oh my, this has to be the most ridiculous argument for pragmatism I've ever heard. I hope the previous leader of the libertarian party can now begin to enjoy his life. :D

Posted

Could you explain how "having political impact" is on a par with seeking and applying state force?

It is not. So I can't explain it to you. If I have made such a statement, please show it to me.

 

 

Oh my, this has to be the most ridiculous argument for pragmatism I've ever heard.

Do you refer to my post? If yes, my post is not an argument for pragmatism. it is a comparison between Ghandi and Stefan. 

Posted

It is not Stefan's role to fix the world, it's one of the reasons why he doesn't charge money or place ads for his show, he gives the community back what they give him. He provides Philosophy from his show pertaining to first principles to help people find and promote self-acceptance. Stefan has time and time again stated that he does not care about state action (libertarian party) because his focus is on the family, it's why he spends much of his time criticizing the libertarian party's for their own parenting habits.

Posted
Do you refer to my post? If yes, my post is not an argument for pragmatism. it is a comparison between Ghandi and Stefan.

 

Yes, you're right, I meant consequentialist.

Posted

It's a little weird to me how you can claim that Stefan was responsible for the State's actions. First of all, he was not responsible for putting in place that system of violence, and he did not play any part in it, or at least not a part larger than any other normal human being. 

 

Second of all, you're not looking at the other part of this story. Now some people with libertarian ideas are spending their time outside of politics, taking good care of their relationships, their businesses and themselves. Do you have any idea how much good this has produced in their lives?

Of course not, and you'll never hear about it, but it is something that is really happening. These people, instead of focusing on voting and election campaigns, may spend, let's say, 20 hours per month on something else. That's over 240 hours in a year! Imagine what can be built by mobilizing the full 30,000 people for 240 hours in a year? You could produce crazy results!

 

Sorry if it feels to you like everyone is attacking you, but I believe that the tone in your first post was hostile as well. 

Posted

Again, I never claimed it was bad, that this happened. The main reason I lied this out is to show the impacts overseas and to get an answer about the whole Ghandi  incompetence claim in the call in show, which I don't understand, because the label "incompetent" applies to everyone, if it is defined by not knowing about a specific consequence.

 

If my first post is written in hostile language, then I will edit parts. But I don't know what parts. It is downvoted two times, so I guess it cuased bad reactions.

Posted
If my first post is written in hostile language, then I will edit parts. But I don't know what parts. It is downvoted two times, so I guess it cuased bad reactions.

 

It's at best a very poor analogy then, which is why people may have voted you down. As Emanuel points out, inferring there is a similarity between Stefan's appeals via the internet and Gandhi's appeals within the political classes of India and Britain are somewhat contrived.

Posted

Second of all, you're not looking at the other part of this story.

 

I wouldn't agree with that, because (in his first post) he also wrote

 

I dont say it is bad longterm. FDP was statist and blocked the anarchists from doing their own thing. But there is a short term impact. So my question is: Stefan, do you call yourself incompetent and if not: do you see the violation of principle by calling one incompetent for not seeing impacts and others not?

 

However, I contradict zippert in the point that I doubt that Stefan's actions made the difference:

 

In the alternative media there have been several reports of electoral fraud all over the country. I haven't found anything on this in English, but if you can read German (or are masters at interpreting Google Translate), see for examplehttp://www.mmnews.de/index.php/politik/15078-wahlbetrug-2013

I live in Germany, but I choose not to concern myself with all the background noise of daily news, so I am not informed on recent developments on the topic of electoral fraud in 2013 and I could not find anything recent in a 20 minutes search, so I guess, the debate has just silently come to an end.

 

What I do remember quite vividly is that I had read that the liberal party (FDP) would probably fail to take the 5% hurdle. That was why (after struggling with myself whether or not going to vote) I went to the polls and (in lack of any PDV candidate in my region) voted for FDP. The question whether the FDP would make it into the parliament (Bundestag) was something that was also frequently discussed in the mainstream media with differing opinions. And while some people might have seen this as a reason to vote for FDP rather than CDU, it is likely that more people have chosen to vote for AfD (the new-founded party wanting to abolish the Euro currency) instead, which had quite a chance of success (maybe would have won without electoral fraud).

 

The reason that I thought that FDP would not make it into the Bundestag and also the reason why AfD was so attractive was that the FDP had broken promises made before the election and suddenly changed their political course during the legislative session 2009 to 2013. So, in a sense I would argue that FDP had catapulted itself out of the Bundestag, before the voters were even asked.

Posted

The reason that I thought that FDP would not make it into the Bundestag and also the reason why AfD was so attractive was that the FDP had broken promises made before the election and suddenly changed their political course during the legislative session 2009 to 2013. So, in a sense I would argue that FDP had catapulted itself out of the Bundestag, before the voters were even asked.

I aggree. FDP lost 4 million voters mainly because of the corruption of its leaders.By the way, I didn't vote and advocated for not voting the FDP in exact these libertarian circles. So this is at no point a critism of nonvoting.Topic election fraud:I have also heard rumors. There is no proof, but it is plausible that parties that are unwanted like AFD + FDP (are actually hated by the left) and especially "dangerous" nationalist parties (NPD, REP) were mildly miscounted. German election is easily cheatable, because the ballots are only counted by one man per ballot.
Posted

I don't know, what you mean by fault. Fault implies a wrongdoing of someone, which i didn't accuse him of.

 

Maybe you want to know how exactly Stef caused the FDP being kicked out. I made the case in my first post. If you want specific details ask for them.

 

 

Well, again here is a missunderstandig. Please read my first post carefully.

 

Stef made the argument that Ghandi is incompetent by not knowing, that his action will cause a violation of NAP by others (here: the indians)

 

Stef himself caused a process, which resulted in a violation of NAP (minimum wage = enforced ban of some contracts).

 

I doubt, that he knew this, so i am asking if he then calls himself incompetent, by holding the same standarts for himself.

You are blaming him for the libertarian party being kicked out of parliment.  Maybe you don't understand what you said and should read your own post more carefully.

Posted

If I try to channel Stef, I think he would say this:

 

Gandhi advocated that Britain end colonial rule of India and allow the Indians to set up home rule. Gandhi knew there was significant strife among the different groups, particularly between Hindus and Muslims, and therefore that immediate independence for India entailed a risk of partition and violence. Gandhi advocated immediate independence. Any effort he made to ameliorate conflict after the end of colonialism was secondary, half-hearted, and unsuccessful.

 

Stef has not directly advocated any action in Germany. I suspect that if you asked him, he would advocate spreading the ideas of peaceful parenting in Germany, in hope that sometime in the future, Germans could make significant progress toward freedom, rather than having a minority waste time trying to slow down the growth of coercive policies.

 

So one important difference is, Gandhi got his wish and contributed to the deaths of 1 million, Stef has partially gotten his wish (not complete yet) and perhaps the German state has grown a tiny bit more than it would otherwise.

 

The question seems to take for granted certain ideas that I think Stef would reject. That is, how can we make progress? I started to answer that question, but it got too long, so I will post it on my blog. http://brimpossible.blogspot.com/2014/01/how-to-pursue-liberty.html

 

Let me hint that I associate different approaches with Ron Paul, Murray Rothbard, and Stefan Molyneux (perhaps inaccurately, even unfairly).

Posted

Well it will be interesting to see how Germans will now approach the challenges of securing personal and political freedom, now that the illusion of democratic participation has been diminished.

 

If I have helped people turn away from politics, I am glad. That has been my consistent aim from the beginning. Freedom does not result from joining organized crime.

Posted

Reminds me of Murray N. Rothbard's qoute

 

 

"Let's put it this way: Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so. Of course, there might well be circumstances—say when both masters are similar—where the slaves would be better off not voting in order to make a visible protest—but this is a tactical not a moral consideration. Voting would not be evil but, in such a case, less effective than the protest.

 

But if it is morally licit and nonaggressive for slaves to vote for a choice of masters, in the same way it is licit for us to vote for what we believe the lesser of two or more evils, and still more beneficial to vote for an avowedly libertarian candidates."

 

http://mises.org/daily/3412

 

I understand that voting is nothing less than mob rule and I would say from a personal standpoint using your whole life to engage in politics is a waste of time. BUT if a Majority finally was Libertarian (20 % Voluntarist and 40 % state libertarian), and the 20 % didn't vote, our impact would be much smaller. Instead if we all voted and had a parlament willing to end the welfare state and have them testing an anarcho-capitalist society on a small scale level we would be much better off

Posted

Reminds me of Murray N. Rothbard's qoute"Let's put it this way: Suppose we were slaves in the Old South, and that for some reason, each plantation had a system where the slaves were allowed to choose every four years between two alternative masters. Would it be evil, and sanctioning slavery, to participate in such a choice? Suppose one master was a monster who systematically tortured all the slaves, while the other one was kindly, enforced almost no work rules, freed one slave a year, or whatever. It would seem to me not only not aggression to vote for the kinder master but idiotic if we failed to do so. Of course, there might well be circumstances—say when both masters are similar—where the slaves would be better off not voting in order to make a visible protest—but this is a tactical not a moral consideration. Voting would not be evil but, in such a case, less effective than the protest.But if it is morally licit and nonaggressive for slaves to vote for a choice of masters, in the same way it is licit for us to vote for what we believe the lesser of two or more evils, and still more beneficial to vote for an avowedly libertarian candidates."http://mises.org/daily/3412I understand that voting is nothing less than mob rule and I would say from a personal standpoint using your whole life to engage in politics is a waste of time. BUT if a Majority finally was Libertarian (20 % Voluntarist and 40 % state libertarian), and the 20 % didn't vote, our impact would be much smaller. Instead if we all voted and had a parlament willing to end the welfare state and have them testing an anarcho-capitalist society on a small scale level we would be much better off

 

When people come to me and blame for not voting "it's your fault we're getting tortured, if only you'd VOTED!"

 

it's not my fault, it's the aggressors fault. Blaming the non-voter is a scapegoat to avoid the real and horrifying issue - there are monsters who aggress and many people cheer it on.

Posted

When people come to me and blame for not voting "it's your fault we're getting tortured, if only you'd VOTED!"

 

it's not my fault, it's the aggressors fault. Blaming the non-voter is a scapegoat to avoid the real and horrifying issue - there are monsters who aggress and many people cheer it on.

 Please point out where I was blaiming

Posted

 Please point out where I was blaiming

 

Not you specifically, I was just referring to your example / quote. Please point out where I said you were blaming me.

Posted

Not you specifically, I was just referring to your example / quote. Please point out where I said you were blaming me.

Okay so you refered to my qoute without adressesing my point? That confused me

Posted

I was addressing what I do when the hypothetical people in the hypothetical situation that Rothbard proposed come to blame me for not voting, and why they do it. Of course it mirrors what people say in the real world with political voting. I wasn't addressing your response to the quote, only the quote.

 

In the name of less confusion - If you want to vote, that's cool, but I don't think that getting voluntarists elected would do anything. Anything that goes "wrong" would be pointed out, saying "see? this is what happens when you try less government". Government relies on propaganda, and would have no reason not to scare everyone into being good little citizens.

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