Though I do believe that there has been a marked decrease in violence since the dark ages (around the world, not just here in the west), Pinker's eyes spell "crazy".
Pinker is awesome. I respect him quite a bit, and the fact that he bases what he speaks on facts and evidence, over emotions and fallacies, makes him that much more respectable.
Keep on with the awesome work, Pinker. I'm enjoying your book, The Blank Slate.
Doesn't this guy look like Dyson Frost I.E. "D. Gibbons" from the tv show FlashForward?? Ironically the character is a genius Physicist and Quantum Scientist. Look it up.
@PktMma Steven Pinker is brilliant; and as you may know (though I highly doubt it), most brilliant people are not the best looking. One of nature's trade-off's I guess. Pinker, in contrast, is not all-too-repulsive, and you should refrain from making fun of him. Or, rather, just listen to his recorded lectures, read one of his many illuminating and lucid books, and stop commenting on his videos. Moron.
@johnbenjamin12 Actually, I have a hard-on for Steven Pinker and I'm in the process of reading a few of his books. And while you may think he's ok I -though being straight - would gladly convert to being a homo if he was available. That being said I don't like his "friendly smile". I much prefer his serious look. Sorry my opinion hurts you feelings.
Resources, Chuck Testa and an arrow to the knee. The world's most annoying and overused memes? Have you heard this drivel about a "resource based economy"? Freakin' magical trains will carry us across the world to buy a sandwich for dinner and will be repaired by robots. Do people actually believe this shit?
You're wasting your time. Notice how SpellboundSolution favors gilded age style capitalism with no sources or no evidence to back up his claims why this is a good thing. This same type of capitalism killed more people in India than the GCF. If we look at when India became a democratic-capitalist state, that's over 100 million people. The estimate from the black book of capitalism shows that capitalism has led to 100 million deaths (and these are real scholars, and they haven't retracted).
@successfulbuild No evidence of what made the "gilded age" a good thing? Yeah it didn't do anything special except create the middle class, increased the average per capita income 10 fold, rise the world's population 6 fold and create practically all the industries that we take for granted today. Those are one or two good things, but remember: there was no social justice to all this!
@successfulbuild I know what you mean but we need to fight the spread of this "free market" propaganda. It's our moral imperative if we want to be consistent with what we believe, wouldn't you agree?
It's like Steven Pinker says in the video: the Libertarian/objectivist cult needs to open itself up to data. Deflation is worse than inflation and there isn't enough gold to back the US dollar alone.
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If every human being would be forced to take an intro to international relations class and macroeconomics 101, Libertarianism would cease.
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This "Libertarian," or "Objectivist" as he puts it, is proud to be an individual. He proves it by living at home with mommy. Still waitin' on that data.
@successfulbuild And as for your beyond beyond retarded claim that you just won't shut up making that Objectivism is somehow a system of "the elites" and is aggressive in nature, Ayn Rand was against aggression to such an extent that she favoured voluntary taxation. Then again I suppose in the mind of a socialist (contradiction in terms much?) social mobility is indeed "favoruing elites", isn't it?
@SpellboundSolution Objectivism is just logically flawed. You must rely on reason and data and then somehow you end up with a "free market" agenda and a ridiculous claim that selfishness will result in universal freedom? It's not just counter-intuitive, it's factually absurd once you use REASON and look at DATA. It's just retarded Cold War game theory mentality, it was wrong then, but at least it was justified by the political climate, to believe it today is just lunacy.
@DonVoghano You (and the rest of the left) are the one who obsesses over free markets, I believe in free everything. In that regard "free market" is redundant. So long as you don't infringe on the rights of anyone else then you should be allowed to do whatever you want, buying and selling items being an example.
@SpellboundSolution Shouting freedom is meaningless and demeaning to the concept. We all want freedom, Hitler wanted the freedom to gas Jews, for example. Empty, empty words. You can't wish that people will magically stop infringing your rosy rights. Unless you are a Smurf, that is. You assume that some (deviant) people WILL and HAVE and take COUNTERMEASURES, and form institutions to PROTECT those rights. The capitalist is the first who distorts the market whenever he can.
@DonVoghano What was "retarded Col War game theory", "the people who murdered 100,000,000 innocent people have apocalyptic weapons pointed at us from all side, so lol, I duno, freedum rokz lol"?
@successfulbuild Want to see the societies in the 20th century in which a (real) elite ruled over a helpless population who had no chance of rising, look to all countries that had "socialist", "people's", "democratic" or better yet "democratic people's" in their title. The most repressive country in recorded history? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's even a fucking trope.
@SpellboundSolution Every power center uses an ideological framework to justify itself. The Bolshevics used "communism," the Fasists used national pride and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the Imperialists used "democracy" and "free market" rhetoric. Like the Christian mocking the Muslim you rightly mock one, and then blindly follow another - textbook example of indoctrination.
@SpellboundSolution Imperialists USE free market RHETORIC as a means to obtain CONSENT from their population so that they may pursue their power expansion. Let me repeat the standard model: A RULING ELITE (wealthy businesses, clergy, military, armed rebel group, crime cartel) fashions an IDEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK (exporting democracy/markets, GOD, national/racial/class pride, revolution) with which it can JUSTIFY ITS RULING POSITION to the domestic population.
Socrates was not killed by democracy. Democracy implies everybody has democratic rights and executions remove those democratic rights, therefore the death penalty is always anti-democratic. Furthermore, Amartya Sen has shown that by not having a health care system in place more people died in India than in the GCF and Yeltsin's neoliberal reforms had higher excess deaths than Stalinism. So, comparing atrocities, I'd take democratic societies over Objectivist thinking anyday.
@successfulbuild Nope, democracy doesn't say anything about individual rights (prove me wrong) democracy is merely a system of government in which decisions are based upon votes. I thought it was really cute when you said "we all have a vote". A dicks worth of good one person's vote would be in a society of ten million people. The rest of society wants to eat me alive? Bummer. But fear not! I have... one vote. Pff.
@SpellboundSolution You are missing the point (by a few miles). In any system those who make the decisions can decide to murder you. The idea is to spread out the decision making as much as possible thereby spreading (not eliminating) this very risk. Of course the Achilles' heel of the system is propaganda which may instill the ideas of the maker to condition mass thought, which is why so much money is poured by elites into the advertisement industry, with great effect.
@DonVoghano So through your eyes every system has a "murder me" clause built into it? I'm not such a pessimist. I believe that I don't have to yield to the wolves, I don't believe that murder is a fact of life. I favour a system in which murder and voting for murder are forbidden, no matter how "spread out the risk" is. Constitutional republicanism is such a system. Which part of the US constitution says "murder is okay, so long as there's very low probability you'll be the victim"?
@SpellboundSolution It's not about being pessimistic. It's about facing the fact that your fellow man has the potential to murder you and that this potential throughout history has expressed itself very vividly. Now then obviously you may write in a constitution that it's self evident that everyone is equal and still enslave black people, and you may write that murder is banned and still carry out death sentences like Jack the Ripper on steroids.
LOl. So according to the objectivst, economics, data, history, is of "no concern." The only thing that matters is the forgotten words of some psuedo-intellectual who admired a serial killer. I don't know what the hell this turd thinks the gold standard is but typing money to gold is a gold standard.
@successfulbuild Admired a serial killer? This guy is just I don't know what. Seriously, what the fucking fuck are you talking about? Are you just taking the piss now? Which "serial killer" do I admire?
Barone's theoretical demonstration renders Mises calculation argument logically defective. Dickinson also pointed this out. If there are Walrasian equations that need solutions there isn't any issue about not being able to price internal products. This is yet another reason why Mises is ignored.
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So, what is the point of these discredited philosophers? There is a reason why the Libertarian/objectivist movement (same thing) is comprised of 20-50 year old men who live with their parents.
@successfulbuild Well if you ask Ayn Rand (some people might say she knew a thing or two about Objectivism. I'm not sure why, but apparently she did) Objectivists and libertarians or not one and the same. The fact that a lot of libertarians I speak to seem like the rich man's anarchist and hate Ayn Rand proves that. It seems to be outsiders, often outside trolls *huh hum*, who like to conflate Objectivists and libertarians.
@successfulbuild Freedom is hell! A free state is a hell hole! I couldn't take it! Sounds like your the kind of guy who should still be living with his parents.
Given the choice between democracy and an objectivist hell-hole (which only exists in fantasy land), most people would choose a democracy. In democracy, everybody has a vote, and no citizen can have his rights violated. Objectivism is armed rule by the government to protect the favored elite. It is in this fashion how the mob operates: shaking down citizens to enforce top-to-bottom rule.
@successfulbuild Nobody has their rights violated... unless people vote to violate them! Heard about that poor chap called Socrates? I'd say life is the ultimate right. Didn't they vote to take it away? The old adage that democracy is a sheep and two wolves voting on what's for dinner may seem indeed, very old, but it sums up democracy quite nicely. So long as you're a wolf your rights are not violated. God help you if you're a sheep.
Corporations also make decisions (planning) long before products are introduced into the market. There are very good explanations for why this is, and within corporations themselves choices are not voluntary. Study institutional economics.
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The democratic model is alive and well for many organizations, like Debian GNU/Linux. Worldwide there are millions of people who work on cooperatives, and Germany to some degree practices the democratic model. There a total of 0 objectivist societies.
@successfulbuild Sure there are a total of 0 Objectivist societies. There are many theocracies around the world. Speaks worlds to me about what kind of societies (or rather, governing systems) the elite favour: freedom or absolute control over their people... which would they choose? Mmmmmmmmm.
Libertarianism (esp. objectivism) is based on force and violence. Many corporations have a greater opportunity cost to society than the value of what they're producing. This is just one of many 'market failures.' Libertarians are now saying we shouldn't do anything about global warming because once we move past the "point of no return" it won't matter anyway,i.e., there'd be no reason to try to fight AGW, so we can continue to have "Libertarian property rights," which don't exist. What crap.
@successfulbuild Might as well double quote myself (or Ayn Rand,) seems like you derpys never hear the first time: "All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism."
"But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires objectivie law.."
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Capitalism requires objectivie law and yet anarchism is "collectivist." It's true that capitalism requires a government but it's not true that all other systems are "collectivist" or anti-market. Pareto's student Barone already proved that "market socialism" is indeed possible.
The problem with Europe is that many of these European have debts denominated in a foreign currency. They have created a gold standard like situation for themselves and if you look at the data you see that the countries that have avoided practicing Austrian austerity are succeeding whereas countries such as Estonia and Latvia have had nothing but trouble with financial austerity. So the countries that are doing the opposite of what a gold standard suggests are succeeding.
Amazon[dot]com, uses C++. I believe they have many more millions of lines of code for their software than even windows, as an ex-engineer for amazon[dot]com once told me. It's basically a massive shit pile of code. Well, C++ comes from a computer scientist who based his research off of his graduate work and of other technologies created by Bell Labs. So, Amazon's search engine is not an example of the free-market. Nothing is. The free-market has never created anything; it's fantasy.
@successfulbuild Well a lot of software is a "massive shit pile of code," I once found a Java class that created an anonymous instance of another class that extended Thread and passed itself as an argument via the this reference and started the thread - in the constructor. Two (subtle) errors on one line of code! But what does that have to do with government? How can you possibly say that Amazon is not the product of a free market? Would Amazon emerge in North Korea?
@SpellboundSolution Give me an example of this code and how it was used. Also, can you show something you've worked on. Where did you get a degree in computer science without having to take an economics class?
@SpellboundSolution Amazon [dot] com is tens of millions of lines of code. A "free-market" is an economy that exists within the perfect competition, theoretical construct of microeconomics. Not even Milton Friedman's pencil qualifies as being produced on the free-market: most of them are produced in China which has protected, state owned firms.
@successfulbuild I've read plenty of essays about so called "perfect competition", and if I'm not mistaken it means each company works at exactly zero dollars profit! A free market means (are you ready?) a market. That is free. Market: people trade goods as they see fit, voluntarily. Free: no third party is allowed to exert force to remove the "voluntarily" part of the equation. All nonsense about "perfect competition" is of no concern.
This idiot (SpellboundSolution) keeps bringing up Japan as an example of of the Free-market. Well, as DonVoghano pointed out in regards to Denmark, the Heritage Foundation (who predicted the Bush tax cuts would have cut down the deficit) pulls things out of their ass. Japan engaged in heavy protectionism after WWII, to their BENEFIT, contrary to foolish doctrines of economics. Furthermore, they have always been a mixed economy, more or less, as shown from this excerpt:
"In addition, due to the financial flexibility afforded by the FILP, Ikeda’s government rapidly expanded government investment in Japan’s infrastructure: building highways, high-speed railways, subways, airports, port facilities, and dams. Ikeda's government also expanded government investment in the communications sector of the Japanese economy previously neglected. Each of these acts continued the Japanese trend towards managed economy that epitomizes the mixed economic model."
@successfulbuild Well if you're interested in understanding economic advances in Japan then you could read something beyond your favourite leftard blog like I have. Read We Were Burning, real stories from real people, not outside observations from people who want to believe the same things you believe. And welcome back uncompilable, I wondered where you'd gone.
@successfulbuild And I don't know if you've noticed that as Japan has moved from freedom towards Keynesianism (see the Index of Economic Freedom) they've moved from "formidable economic power" to "state suffering two lost decades". Whoopsy daisy.
@SpellboundSolution Japan has always had somewhat of a mixed economy and the US controlled over 70% of its oil imports up until the 70s to give it "veto power" in international affairs.
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As for my citing of a blog where the author knows what he's talking about (Social democracy for the 21st century), you have cited a total of ZERO economists. Name an economist who favors tying money to gold. Where are your sources that show a better growth rate for the Gilded Age.
@successfulbuild Always my favourite wake up call. Morning sb. At no point have I said I favour "gold money", instead I favour a money supply limited by gold and held at value to prevent inflation by being backed by real physical gold. I'm not saying we should revert to the time when we all walked around with easy-to-chip-at gold coins. I've got a feeling that a Solyndra scandal wouldn't work if money was as precious as I propose though. Only fiat currency allows a Solyndra.
@SpellboundSolution That is pretty ridiculous has they've seen better growth than many other so-called free-market societies. What numbers are you using. Provide your sources, little turd.
Spellbound solution is engaging in his typical lying, quite common for a member of the objectivst cult. (For a refutation of objectivism google Ayn Rand contra human nature, be sure and read the hilarious adventures of one of them infiltrating an objectivist cult meeting),.
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The twentieth century had the greatest wealth creation AND the largest economic expansion, largely because the Federal Reserve curtailed the boom and bust cycle. It was deregulation which brought it back.
The United States killed about 3 million victims in Indochina, and was largely responsible for Pol Pot coming to power, even giving him support when he escaped to Taiwan, including Reagan. And the Reagan administration supported Suharto who killed half a million of his own people and led a 30+ year war against Timor. Plus you have 3+ million in Latin America. Google: "state of the intellectual left social democracy" and read my comments. (And read the blog to see Austrian economics debunked.)
@successfulbuild So if genocide occurs anywhere in the world, committed by any tyrant, motivated by any ideology, the United States is always to blame nonetheless?
This type of analysis is so empty! Exactly what lesson are we to learn from this mystical "decline of violence?" It's the usual loose sequence of more or less accurate data with a rather shallow interpretation from a moderate, provincial status quo point of view, ultimately reinforcing the status quo. It's not as bold as philosophy and not as rigorous as science: in short it's a waste of precious effort, culminating in an intellectual cul-de-sac.
@DonVoghano We can learn a lot of things from this. First of all it debunks the romantic fallacy, as the greatest decline in violence came after the creation of the first states. Furthermore, it shows that a world in where private leaders have absolute control (feudalism, private armies) there generally is more violence. A political science interpretation of even the twentieth century confirms this.
@successfulbuild Or looking at which states respected individual rights/let people be vs which states had governments which used their privilege of a monopoly on force to work for the "good" of the people. Which societies thrived and which were hell on earth, without a single exception?
@successfulbuild The data is too weak, scattered and biased to propose a more general Hobbsian view of a "savage" hunter gatherer. I'd say the prehistorical truth lies somewhere in between. Now the state is born as an act of violence and conquest and in its nascent phase naturally sets up extreme violence, which is then slowly metabolized by a long social bargaining process. In my view, then, yes, violence declines, but from an original peak initiated by state formation itself.
@DonVoghano Given that prior assumptions of human nature in the "state of nature" were based on speculation (the conflict between Hobbes and Rousseau or Hobbes and Locke), and modern assumptions are based on forensic archeology and analyzing skulls for fractures and so on, I fail to see how this doesn't qualify as "scientific." It is certainly more scientific, than say, economics, which is mostly abstract mathematical nonsense.
@successfulbuild Economics is worse than that: it's meaningless mathematical models in service of ideology. Modern assumptions on the other hand are too partial to get a realistic picture and should rather encourage a healthy dose of agnosticism. By analyzing the Yanomami vs Mbuti, or pre- vs post- columbian natives you get very different pictures, just as you might be exaggerating by extrapolating the findings of a bone pit to the whole of humanity at the time.
@DonVoghano If you go back and read through the comments before I started arguing with these two imbeciles I gave some implications it has for international relations as well. As for "reinforcing the status quo" -- that's not necessarily a bad thing. Keep in mind many Libertarians advocate returning to a gold standard based on fallacious assumptions like that "fiat moeny encourages wars," etc., Social democracies tend to be less violent than say, Pinochet's Chile as well.
@successfulbuild "Libertarian", "gold standard" I suppose it's the third and fourth time respectively that I have tell you that I support neither (there's a difference between the cop out term "gold standard" and real value backed currency that can be readily traded with gold.) If I'm I'm an imbecile then what are you?
@successfulbuild And I love arrogant turd holes like you who can't get through a sentence without boasting about how smart they are while constantly telling everybody else how stupid they are. Provides a reminder to me that I'm not a cretin, although provides a reminder that such people do exist. There's pros and cons to everything I guess.
@successfulbuild So-called "Libertarians" are just vomiting mindless propaganda and advocacy of mass slavery. It takes 4 seconds to debunk that load of shit. Of course a social democratic state is incomparably better than a so-called "free market" feudal nightmare. That said one should not discount the possibility of alternative institutions that could further erode/dissolve state power and unnecessary hierarchy into more humane variants.
@SpellboundSolution What about the 20th century? In proportion to the population it's true that it wasn't as bloody as any given century from the 12th on, at least as far as Europeans and their offshoots are concerned.
@DonVoghano Fraid not. To the extent that countries were free they were bloodless. Compare Europe post WWII: which half was prosperous(ish, they became more prosperous as we threw away government controls in the 80s) and secure and which part had people risking their lives to leave it? Eeyup the evil capitalist "feudalist" half and the glorious socialist "democratic" halves respectively.
@SpellboundSolution 1st off everyone agrees on the basic fact that the 20th century, at least for Europe, is not the bloodiest. However here you add some claims that you should carefully verify. For example the 80s marked the beginning of stagnation and a boom in sovereign debt for most industrialized countries of the Western block, and govt controls, which were necessary and justified, were only selectively eroded in favor of finance leading to 3 decades of boom/bust cycles.
@DonVoghano I'm not quite sure I read that correctly, are you saying the financial sector is free in the West? Look back to every financial crisis and you'll find the ugly face of government intervention somewhere (the most recent crisis being the result of the American government's obsession with everyone owning a home and forcing banks to give them loans they couldn't pay back.)
@SpellboundSolution I know your position, it's wrong at the core. That "free market" crap is so childish I won't even go into it. You have to look at POWER, the deciding factor on how "free" anyone can be. Any concentration of power, be it ideology, violence or wealth must be distributed or broken up or it will negate liberty. That is the essence of true libertarianism going back 5000 years, without all that ridiculous Ayn Rand "free market" bullshit.
@DonVoghano Well if you believe that keeping what you earn is "childish crap" I'll send you my address and you can give me 10% of your earnings. Keeping all of it is clearly quite childish. And how many rooms of your home my I rent out? I believe you have too much power owning it all yourself. Don't give some crap like "you earned it"; too much power and derpa derpa derp. Silly me, people like you can never live by your own moral code.
@SpellboundSolution I said what I wrote: NECESSARY govt controls were SELECTIVELY ERODED in FAVOR of finance. Meaning that the banks used the state in their interest and fucked everyone else. I.E.: from the '30s to the Carter years there were NO FINANCIAL CRISES, from the Carter/Reagan years to today it's a never ending stream of bubbles and busts. Govt and financial institutions are different power centers, both extremely dangerous if left unchecked.
@DonVoghano Is finance the most regulated sector of the US economy? That's a simple yes no question. Answer the question. Also is high tech the freest sector of the economy (or one of the freest)? If the answers are yes for both questions is it a coincidence the former has been a catastrophe for too many years to count and the latter has been a success from day one?
@SpellboundSolution Are you using the hi-tech sector as an example of free market? By Odin, brother, every technological advancement of the past 100 years has depended almost entirely on the State sector. About financial regulation it MUST be in place, it very much should be the most regulated sector. But then again one might look at the wording of the regulation, most of it is a late addition aimed at weakening simpler, cleaner rules in place before.
@DonVoghano "By Odin, brother, every technological advancement of the past 100 years has depended almost entirely on the State sector" well I think you may be mistaking me for somebody else as I don't have a brother, but I'll be intrigued to hear you back up that claim.
@DonVoghano From bipolar, thin film and field effect transistors to liquid crystal displays and quartz clocks every piece of high technology we take for granted was made by greedy profit seekers in America and quite a few in Japan. Search Amazon (made by government?) for "We Were Burning". Even if you don't want to hear the truth about how entrepreneurs created all the great leaps of technology it's great read if you're tech-obsessed nerd.
@SpellboundSolution Universities (and the whole education system more generally in the past 100 years) have been mostly founded and maintained by states, regardless of the formal structure. True from Cambridge, UK to MIT, USA. Radar, jet engine, computers, internet, lasers, you name it, all grew because of massive state financing and long incubation periods under a military guise or another.
@DonVoghano And I know what you're going to say next: the government made the internet. All I can say is this: they didn't. The government's involvement in what we call "the internet" today, from Amazon to YouTube, via our cable and broadband modems and wireless routers is paltry to irrelevant and would have been driven by the market if the communists weren't planning to nuke us (leading to internet 0.00000001.)
@DonVoghano In what way is a bank a centre of "power"? Last time I checked power required weapons. So long as banks can't pay the government off they have no power. The mixed economy and the regulatory system you favour is what gives them power. Power is for sale right now and everyone from CEOs to union leaders buy it. A separation of economy and state will solve that problem. End economic theocracy today!
@SpellboundSolution Power does not require weapons. Power is defined as the ability to control the environment and other people. Knowledge and wealth properly used are as effective an instrument of control as a shotgun. That is why the laws of property, perfectly applied can easily generate a de-facto enslaved serf, while a good demagogue can create a religion or political party and control a nation.
@DonVoghano What a load of shite. Also the only reason we have never had a true free market system is because the elite hates it. Why? Because it leaves us all free! It's such a simple concept no wonder you don't understand it. Don't drawl on about this bullshit of power in private hands, nobody has power over you if the people with guns leave you alone. You are not a serf if you are free to start a business and keep your earnings. What a fucking retarded thing to say.
@SpellboundSolution It's such a simple concept that it's just not true. It would be true if people were rational machines maximizing self-interest. They are not. Human beings are moved entirely by pre-rational urges (such as your urge to live, fuck and sing, ever though about how irrational all that is?), which they then backwards-rationalize. Assume that they are rational maximizers of self-interest and you will just have the most irrational society possible.
@SpellboundSolution Property intrinsically generates slaves. Ever heard of indentured serfs? They still exist today. What exactly in a world ruled by contracts protects a debtor from becoming a de facto slave to the creditor? "Bankruptcy" and "debt jubilee" are nothing but government constraints! That's why you have to man up an accept austerity packages from Cameron while England tanks with the rest of us in Europe.
@DonVoghano Property creates salves? Almost as cute as that ever popular oxymoron "wage slave". What was the wage of the historic salve? Oh yeah, £0.00. In the real world property always exists, the question is who owns it, the self appointed elite or the individual? I support individual property rights. Destroy individual property rights and property doesn't fly out the window like an obedient pixie.
@SpellboundSolution The objective should not necessarily be the destruction of "property rights" but the limitation of power concentrations (that's the whole point of the three branches of govt stuff, you know, just an extension of the same valid concept). Once power is kept in line, then each individual can blossom. By the very laws of credit, property tends to concentrate, it's vital to create a countermeasure. Places like Denmark have pretty successfully understood this.
@DonVoghano The "limitation of power concentration"? You taking from the producers what you can't produce yourself? If there's one thing I admire about Marxists it's your wonderful use of language. I suppose when you're advocating nationwide theft you can't afford to be upfront and honest. Marxists: the world's most eloquent burglars.
@SpellboundSolution As soon as you don't get something you revert back to that old barking "Commie" business, which I honestly find offensive and demeaning of your intelligence. It's hard to explain relatively complicated matters in 500 words, reality is a bit more loaded than "LOL TEH MARKET WILL FIX IT LOL."
@DonVoghano Yeah, fuck the 500 words limit, but if I had a choice between LULZ TEH MARKIT and LULZ TEH GUBMENT I'd choose LULZ TEH MARKIT any day of the week. That is unless we're talking about preserving rights and keeping the peace. The concept of a marketplace of force is the wacky and dangerous idea the prevents me from calling myself a libertarian. We need a government to monopolize force; a marketplace of violence is called civil war.
@DonVoghano Anyway sorry if I've been calling you names or whatever it's just so frustrating sometimes. And when I come upon somebody who seems to be a anarchist-statist hybrid it moves from mere frustrating to downright confusing.
@SpellboundSolution I'm not a "statist" or a "hybrid" or whatever. I look at the outcomes and I look at history. That whole "free market" fairy tale is simply untrue, it's just an ideological tool waved around by the elites, precisely like Bolshevism. Not a surprising fact that douche bags of all colors from Reagan to Obama have been abusing the term. That alone should ring a fucking bell. Ever since it rose again to prominence in the 70s freedom globally has been eroded.
@DonVoghano What member of an historic elite has favoured freedom for the people? That's like saying communists get a boner when they think about the profit motive. You and uncompilable below just need to do a little bit of reading and finally understand what "free market" actually means: letting people decide what they want to buy and sell without the gun of a third party sticking in their face the whole time. No elite would voluntarily sacrifice the gun. Never have. Never will.
@DonVoghano Also I'd like to finally put an end to daft stereotypes of Denmark and other Northern European countries as being socialist paradises that leftist Americans jerk off to: check the Index of Economic Freedom; Denmark is more capitalist then America!!!
@SpellboundSolution That index is from the Heritage Foundation and its worthless, a vademecum for delocalization basically. In Denmark college is free and students receive a stipend, the unemployed are paid for and retrained by the govt until they find an equal or better job, universal health care is state run and top notch; taxation is very high and so is distribution of income. That's what a democratic govt should do, though there is still much room for improvement.
@DonVoghano And you live in Italy if I'm not mistaken. I'm very impressed about how much you know about Denmark. Denmark certainly leaves a lot to be desired, like all Western European countries they're spending themselves into oblivion and have gotten used to the idea that money is infinite since it's worthless (it isn't and it's not) but they are not the kind of society you crave for. And how can an anarchist praise government run education?!?! What kind of anarchist are you?!
@SpellboundSolution Govt education is better than church and private education on an absolute scale. I've seen all 3 in 3 continents and I stand by this statement. Although I myself "never let my schooling interfere with my education."
@DonVoghano Just because government has a monopoly, or borderline monopoly on education in the west doesn't mean government education is better. In England all the rich people send their kids to the few private schools we have. Guess what? They're much better off. It's very hard to say the product of a monopoly is the best possible as you've never seen the product of the competitor.
@DonVoghano Also John Stossel did a program on American union controlled schools vs some European schools in which parents could pick and choose where their children went. Again a tiny, tiny element of freedom and competition entered the equation as opposed of the 100% force backed, government monopolized American system. Guess which one worked better? Can't guess? Well watch the program. It's available on YouTube. Bit depressing though.
@SpellboundSolution John Stossel is another fraud who made millions spinning that "free market" bullshit. Once again, when a mainstream news anchor makes millions repeating a line, bells should start ringing as loud as Hiroshima. I tried to watch his shit but it feels a bit like listening to Catholic radio here in Italy: unless you are a religious fanatic it's just an insult to your brain.
@DonVoghano Seriously just look up free market and understand what it even means. It's clearly just two words strung together for people like you. You'd do a lot to learn. I'm not counting on you learning anything or pulling you head out of the sand (or your own arse) but I can try. Learn. What free market. Means. Learn before you bleat on about how "crap" it is and ignore everything around you what little freedom there is has created and ignore human history.
@SpellboundSolution I grew up in the US, absorbed the indoctrination of the anglosphere, and for a while I was just like you. But unlike you I did not limit my sources to the Heritage/Mises/Rand/Friedman bunch. I'm of the idea that all claims should be investigated. So I looked up Adam Smith and immediately noticed many differences. I then proceeded to look at the theory and practice of modern "free market" advocates and I was intellectually unsatisfied and morally disgusted.
@DonVoghano Actually it was the opposite way round for me. It's said that if you're not a Marxist by the time you're 16 you have no heart, if you're still a Marxist by the time you're 20 you have no brain. I have a heart and a brain. I was of the naive "we can all share everything" mindset until I started earning, and then "sharing" suddenly turned into "stealing". When I became the victim of my own ideology it dawned on me it was immoral.
@SpellboundSolution Yes, you are misquoting Churchill, a man who never hid his great respect for Hitler and Stalin. I have no respect for a man who presented moral bankruptcy as if it were intelligence. I earn too and of all the morally despicable things I see, sharing truly seem the least. You want to justify your own immorality and claim it's intellect like Churcy, go right ahead. Surely private vices will lead to public goods.
@DonVoghano When did I say anything about Churchill? If you check Wikiquote you'll find that Churchill never said anything like it. People often invent quotes or pick them out of magazines and newspaper articles and then attributed them to people they like. In this case it was misattributed to Churchill. For me the only thing that matters is the quote itself. And boy, is it ever true!
@SpellboundSolution It's not true at all, it's simply moral bankruptcy. It's basically saying that while you are young you believe in a moral society (heart) and by the time you get old you should have understood it's hopeless and switched to minding your own interest and fucking off society (brain).
@DonVoghano How is leaving people alone the same as "fucking off" from them? Do you honestly appreciate people sticking their noses into your life the whole time? I thought that once you become an adult you could live your own life just fine. There's nothing wrong with helping people so long as you want to, just don't force your will on them. Remember: not all people want your help. I know I don't.
@SpellboundSolution Morality demands first that you do no harm, but as a second best option. The moral person should try his best, according to his means, to help his fellow man. When you see a wounded woman on the street your impulse is not to "leave her alone" but to lend aid. The principle generalizes.
@DonVoghano Stop playing word games, you know perfectly well what I mean by "leave alone": I mean don't point your gun at my head and tell me what to do and pull the trigger if I say no. Helping other people is fine.
@SpellboundSolution There will always be people pointing metaphorical guns at your face. Repeating that you wanna be free is not gonna do anything to prevent it. The only way to prevent it is to make sure that no individual or group thereof has the ability to point that proverbial gun. A relative level of equality is a prerequisite for justice, this is an axiom that goes back to the Greeks.
@DonVoghano When we live in a society in which justice is based upon theft what schmuck will work and create wealth? If morality is based on the precept the able will provide for the needy who will put themselves forward as needy and who will put themselves forward as able? In short in a system of masters and slaves who would volunteer to be a slave? Atlas has quietly shrugged throughout history, that's why we've always remained in the mud. Freedom lifts us.
@SpellboundSolution The only way to serenity is a deep personal pursuit of morality through learning and introspection. Giving it up to pursue status and material gain just makes life into a living hell.
@DonVoghano I don't try to "pursue status", I keep to myself most of the time. Politicians try to pursue status. And I'm glad that I live in a society where there is at least a semblance of freedom left. Do you know in North Korea people have radios with dials held in place that are checked regularly to make sure people haven't adjusted them. If the checker can't find your radio it's assumed you've hidden it and you're thrown in a death camp to have chemical weapons tested on you.
@SpellboundSolution You pursue status, everyone does. It's just part of our biological programming, just like morality and the capacity for language. Nietzsche called it "Wille zur Macht." Some people do it more, some less. Western culture and its institutions, being extremely violent, values such behavior and encourages it through its ideologies and penalizes moral and altruistic behavior by branding it as weak or harmful.
@DonVoghano I've never taken Nietzsche's ideas too seriously. He's the man who claimed we should look to the god of drunkenness before the god of light and knowledge. No, I don't "pursue status". The day you know me personally is the day you can correct me on that.
@DonVoghano A rather extreme example, granted, but that's the kind of heart-driven society that results when nobody is allowed to be left alone. When "freedom" is synonymous with "fucking off". Why is leaving people free and granting them privacy if they want it so unreasonable? By what right can you interfere with other people lives and take away their privacy and freedom?
@SpellboundSolution You have a need for and a responsibility towards your environment and other living things. You are not an island and will never live in a bubble no matter how many times you repeat to yourself that you wanna be "left alone." The only way to a meaningful existence is to accept the burden of Atlas. If Atlas shrugs, the world collapses.
@DonVoghano If Atlas Shrugged the world collapses. Guess you never read the novel, did you? That was the whole point! The productive people were sick to the back teeth of being spat at and withdrew from society and let it crumble without them, but it didn't mean that they owed a debt to all of society for everything they'd worked to create. That's like saying we have every graffiti artist to thank for every masterpiece of art. Quite ridiculous if you really think about it.
@SpellboundSolution In the complex web of interactions of society it's not ridiculous at all. Graffiti art takes from many sources, including the masterpieces of classic artwork, the flashy imagery of advertisement as well as being a reaction to the gray inhumanity of the modernist architecture that imprisons poor people living in post-war "hoods."
@DonVoghano Analogy okay, analogy. What you were saying is in a society of geniuses and dunces the productive geniuses who create industrial empires (yikes! So much poooooower! Let's smash it to pieces for our own good!) owe everything to the dunces because... because. But luckily due the madness of that argument at least every dunce owes everything back. And everything to every other dunce.
@SpellboundSolution Work was never meant to create wealth. That's a distortion of power systems. Work is just another way of applying our creativity and ingenuity in the process of surviving. Industrial empires are only useful insofar as they better living conditions. In Victorian England, for examples, they made life incomparably worse, and only through bloody union struggles has any benefit actually reached the public at large.
@DonVoghano Well if the industrial revolution was so bad why did people choose to work? They could have stayed on the farms if they wanted to. Jobs existed before the industrial revolution. The idea that we have unions to thank for wealth is beyond laughable.
@DonVoghano Anyway this is getting tiresome now. The only argument that is needed is reality and history: look at where the world is free. Look at where people have been left free to create and where they know they can keep the fruits of their earnings. In those places people have grown to be wealthy with or without unions or any of the other things the left claims are needed to create wealth. All I can say to you is don't argue with me, argue with reality.
@SpellboundSolution The world is not free, you and I are only free in comparison to a disgusting past. Wealth historically has been created ALWAY in gross violation of market principles, from Imperialist Britain and continuing with the slavery, civil war and isolationism of the USA. Markets have ever only worked in conditions of relative equality, which is the principle behind Ordoliberalism and Social Democracy. THAT is reality, and you can check it for yourself.
@DonVoghano The idea that wealth was create in times of slavery and oppression is also rather tiresome and simply doesn't stand up to the facts of reality. It's just melodramatic nonsense the left would have us believe. I don't see slavery driving the semiconductor industry. In the real world slavery COULDN'T drive the semiconductor industry. Just wouldn't work.
@SpellboundSolution Oh my God. The US developed from a rural wasteland to a global power during the mid 1800s thanks to civil war and a hyper-protectionist policy that sealed the US market for 70 years. Before that it was one of the many slave nations that supplied British industry with what it needed for its own "revolution." US slavery served UK needs, ever heard of cotton, the engine of the industrial revolution? Again, UNCONTROVERSIAL, EASILY OBTAINABLE DATA.
@DonVoghano And those notorious "robber barons"? Did they succeed due to hyper protectionism or the absolute freedom the left acknowledged existed and they hated? Of course I'm sure you'll say the robber barons who never robbed anything from anyone never created any value for themselves. They didn't create new industries, new means of transportation, ten of thousands of jobs or anything. Also the UK abolished slavery in 1806. Eighteen. O. Six.
@DonVoghano And all the incredible wealth that was created in economical free 20th century countries, but not socialist countries. The 20th century was the first one in which slavery was universally outlawed. Your claim that slavery leads to wealth (why haven't we been rich for the last 10,000 years?!) simply doesn't hold water there.
@SpellboundSolution You guys can only argue with these strawmen. I never said slavery creates wealth, what I say, completely uncontroversially, is that Western industry developed in nations which abused overseas empires as a source of raw materials. Without cotton and sugar plantations farmed by slaves or serfs THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Just like without military control of the Middle East our oil-based economy would collapse. UNfuckingCONTROVERSIAL.
@DonVoghano What a load of bollocks. How do you know the Industrial Revolution couldn't have happened? Mankind has practiced slavery for tends of thousands of years, the Industrial Revolution occurred after the Enlightenment and the introduction of economic freedom. You don't need slavery for industry (strawman? Sounds like that's what you jut said) you just. Need. Freedom.
@DonVoghano If I'm wrong then explain to me why the Industrial Revolution occurred when it did and where it did. Complete fluke that it happened on the first part of the world that saw freedom? Personally I'd say it was no fluke.
@SpellboundSolution Freedom existed well before the industrial revolution. The Iroquois for example had quite a peaceful and free society, with an effective system of managing resources and conflict. The need for rapid industrial growth has less to do with freedom and more to do with power, as rabid competition and hundreds of years of extremely bloody conflicts between European nations required a quick and constant upping of economic and military influence at any cost.
@DonVoghano Freedom did not exist before the Enlightenment. A few religious communes and tribes with highly strict rules do not count as "free", not by any stretch of the imagination! And the Industrial Revolution was essentially Development 1.0. It was revolutionary because it was the first time it happened, but not the last. See the charts I've given you. Whenever countries, from Japan to Chile, have become free they have industrialized and developed.
@DonVoghano Also what about my two charts? You claim that slavery = wealth, I claim that freedom = wealth. The graphs back up my claim. You can check the numbers if you want, they're available online. How do you explain the drift from development to stagnation as countries drift from freedom to non-freedom?
@SpellboundSolution Keynes had promised growth and stability in exchange for a minor redistribution of income. Afraid of the fascist/communist alternatives Western elites accepted, only to later regret it as higher culture and quality of life were quickly leading to the generalized questioning of privileges and institutions of power. The shift to a financial economy and Friedmanite free-market doctrine accompanied by massive propaganda was the tool elected to fix the problem.
@DonVoghano Keynes indeed promised, too bad he didn't deliver! You can't tell me with a straight face that Keynesianism has worked? And again let's drop cute euphemisms like "redistribution"; it is called theft, and nationwide theft can hardly be called "minor". Minor theft (or "wealth redistribution") is carried out by a pick pocket, not a government mad on Keynes.
@SpellboundSolution Keynes did what he said he would. Permitted a long period of relatively stable growth without any major infringement on the privileges of the elites. Sadly he did not deliver the submission of the masses that the elites always strive to obtain. It was commercial propaganda that delivered that, so Keynes was dumped and elites focused their efforts on advertising as a means to hide and further their privileges.
@DonVoghano This talk about "elites" is also very tiresome. Are not the political class "elites" too? Do you believe that those who wield (real) guns favour freedom? No, elites do not favour freedom. If elites control everything then mankind should have been free throughout all our history. We always have to fight and struggle for freedom and it wears away if we don't keep fighting for it. "Elites" favour government privileges and power, not freedom.
@SpellboundSolution The political class are elites, so are high level military figures and state bureaucrats, the wealthy are elites, and major intellectuals and heads of ideological institutions (churches, think tanks etc) are elites.
@SpellboundSolution Wealthy business owners favor government. They pay lip service to "free market" ideology when it suits them, and then cry to nanny state when the shit hits the fan. They demand special privileges, credit and protection from the collective as "the productive part of society," but claim any and all profit as their own.
@DonVoghano "Wealthy business owners favor government. They pay lip service to "free market" ideology when it suits them, and then cry to nanny state when the shit hits the fan." Some do, some don't, but if you understand that then why don't you favour the free market? Are you still just refusing to understand what a free market is? Those businessman who favour the nanny state would lose if the nanny state didn't exist!
@SpellboundSolution The shift can be observed quite clearly. From the mid '70s Keynesian economics was quickly dropped in favor of the Chicago school of Friedman. The ascent of the "free market" school culminated in 1976 as Friedman was awarded the Nobel. The advent of the Friedmanite school coincides with the financialization of the economy and liberalization of capital movements internationally, as well as 40 years of stagnation culminating in the current crisis.
@DonVoghano Do you know how bad things were in the 1970s? They even invented a new term in the decade: stagflation. Few people supported free markets but it was considered the lesser of two evils. Basically Keynes has fucked us in the arse, these horrid businessmen will have to be given a chance again. I'd say that was the right thing to do. I can't put in 500 words how every crisis since then can trace its roots to government involvement, but it can.
@SpellboundSolution You look at countries that are economically successful AND socially decent today and it's EXCLUSIVELY, and let me stress EXCLUSIVELY, countries which have adopted an Ordoliberal or Social-Democratic economic model for most of the 20th century.
@DonVoghano Doesn't it strike you as odd that mummy and daddy tell the child in the sandbox to "share" the car, but when somebody comes along and tries to "share" mummy and daddy's car they immediately call the police? If that toddler could conjure the words he would call it hypocrisy and cynicism. That is what morally disgusts me. I'm simply morally consistent. I don't live for anyone else or ask them to live for me. Live and let live. Is that so disgusting?
@SpellboundSolution The only reason why you can claim to be an anarchist is that the term has been emptied of meaning. There is a continuum of demolition of dogma and prerogatives of power starting with the reformation and furthering free, critical and moral thought. Smith and Hume, Mill and Bentham, Humboldt and Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin, Dewey and Chomsky, just to name a few REAL INTELLECTUALS with a monumental personal culture and near spotless moral conduct...
@DonVoghano When the hell did I claim to be an anarchist?! We need government. The sad truth is there will alway be people who initiate force. And so long as there is such a thing as aggressive force there will need to be defensive force. I think it's better to delegate that use of defensive force to what Pinker describes as "a disinterested third patty" with a privilege of a monopoly of the use of force. Can you imagine how horrible a marketplace of force would look?
@SpellboundSolution You see that your position is incoherent? If a state with monopoly on violence exists then powerful economic actors can and will use their influence to buy it and use it to increase their influence over society. Mind you this happened OVER AND OVER in history. Power won't give a shit about your free market ideals, if it can abuse its position to increase its influence it will always do so.
@DonVoghano Well there is a very, very simple solution to that problem. Can you figure it out? REMOVE FORCE FROM THE MARKETPLACE!!!!!!! If government force can not be bought and sold then no amount of money can by favours. Michael Moore has a national holiday named after a TV program for $5,000 (not exactly Fortune 500) money. It doesn't have to be that way.
@DonVoghano For people who use that moronic adage "money is power", "money is" whatever is for sale. In Medieval times money wasn't a plasma television because plasma televisions weren't on the market. In a real capitalist country money isn't power because power isn't on the market. If politicians and bureaucrats aren't selling power then power can't be bought. This is so simple I just don't know why people can't understand it.
@DonVoghano What is a "resource"? For thousands of years what we call crude oil was a well pollutant that made water inedible. It took thinking people to turn it into the black gold it is today. I'm bored to tears of hearing about "resources". The only real resource is the human mind and if a person chooses to sell their mind they every right to do so. Resources, money and personal freedom are not power, a gun pointed at your face is.
@DonVoghano Objectivists are not anarchists just because we advocate freedom and a lack of aggression. There is a big difference between non-aggressiveness and pacifism. If somebody punches you in the face you don't turn the other cheek, you punch back twice as hard. Just never throw the first punch. Why do so few people not understand the distinction between defensive and aggressive force?
Though I do believe that there has been a marked decrease in violence since the dark ages (around the world, not just here in the west), Pinker's eyes spell "crazy".
Sweyn78 2 weeks ago in playlist Reason.tv Features
A better title for the book would have been 'Seeing the world as it was and now is' or 'Your conventional wisdom sucks'
MultiUniv3rsal 3 weeks ago
Awesome, posted on my birthday.
Pinker is awesome. I respect him quite a bit, and the fact that he bases what he speaks on facts and evidence, over emotions and fallacies, makes him that much more respectable.
Keep on with the awesome work, Pinker. I'm enjoying your book, The Blank Slate.
raspberrymuffin 1 month ago
"WWIII didn't happen." *Fingers crossed*
davidtshane 1 month ago
This has been flagged as spam show
Doesn't this guy look like Dyson Frost I.E. "D. Gibbons" from the tv show FlashForward?? Ironically the character is a genius Physicist and Quantum Scientist. Look it up.
RabidKitten0 1 month ago
Comment removed
RabidKitten0 1 month ago
Steven Pinker shouldn't try to smile while talking. He looks ridiculous.
PktMma 2 months ago
@PktMma Steven Pinker is brilliant; and as you may know (though I highly doubt it), most brilliant people are not the best looking. One of nature's trade-off's I guess. Pinker, in contrast, is not all-too-repulsive, and you should refrain from making fun of him. Or, rather, just listen to his recorded lectures, read one of his many illuminating and lucid books, and stop commenting on his videos. Moron.
johnbenjamin12 1 month ago
@johnbenjamin12 Actually, I have a hard-on for Steven Pinker and I'm in the process of reading a few of his books. And while you may think he's ok I -though being straight - would gladly convert to being a homo if he was available. That being said I don't like his "friendly smile". I much prefer his serious look. Sorry my opinion hurts you feelings.
PktMma 1 month ago
Resources, Chuck Testa and an arrow to the knee. The world's most annoying and overused memes? Have you heard this drivel about a "resource based economy"? Freakin' magical trains will carry us across the world to buy a sandwich for dinner and will be repaired by robots. Do people actually believe this shit?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
You're wasting your time. Notice how SpellboundSolution favors gilded age style capitalism with no sources or no evidence to back up his claims why this is a good thing. This same type of capitalism killed more people in India than the GCF. If we look at when India became a democratic-capitalist state, that's over 100 million people. The estimate from the black book of capitalism shows that capitalism has led to 100 million deaths (and these are real scholars, and they haven't retracted).
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild No evidence of what made the "gilded age" a good thing? Yeah it didn't do anything special except create the middle class, increased the average per capita income 10 fold, rise the world's population 6 fold and create practically all the industries that we take for granted today. Those are one or two good things, but remember: there was no social justice to all this!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild I know what you mean but we need to fight the spread of this "free market" propaganda. It's our moral imperative if we want to be consistent with what we believe, wouldn't you agree?
DonVoghano 2 months ago
It's like Steven Pinker says in the video: the Libertarian/objectivist cult needs to open itself up to data. Deflation is worse than inflation and there isn't enough gold to back the US dollar alone.
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If every human being would be forced to take an intro to international relations class and macroeconomics 101, Libertarianism would cease.
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This "Libertarian," or "Objectivist" as he puts it, is proud to be an individual. He proves it by living at home with mommy. Still waitin' on that data.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild "Libertarian/Objectivist cult." Yawn. Your trolling is getting old now.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild And as for your beyond beyond retarded claim that you just won't shut up making that Objectivism is somehow a system of "the elites" and is aggressive in nature, Ayn Rand was against aggression to such an extent that she favoured voluntary taxation. Then again I suppose in the mind of a socialist (contradiction in terms much?) social mobility is indeed "favoruing elites", isn't it?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Objectivism is just logically flawed. You must rely on reason and data and then somehow you end up with a "free market" agenda and a ridiculous claim that selfishness will result in universal freedom? It's not just counter-intuitive, it's factually absurd once you use REASON and look at DATA. It's just retarded Cold War game theory mentality, it was wrong then, but at least it was justified by the political climate, to believe it today is just lunacy.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano You (and the rest of the left) are the one who obsesses over free markets, I believe in free everything. In that regard "free market" is redundant. So long as you don't infringe on the rights of anyone else then you should be allowed to do whatever you want, buying and selling items being an example.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Shouting freedom is meaningless and demeaning to the concept. We all want freedom, Hitler wanted the freedom to gas Jews, for example. Empty, empty words. You can't wish that people will magically stop infringing your rosy rights. Unless you are a Smurf, that is. You assume that some (deviant) people WILL and HAVE and take COUNTERMEASURES, and form institutions to PROTECT those rights. The capitalist is the first who distorts the market whenever he can.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano What was "retarded Col War game theory", "the people who murdered 100,000,000 innocent people have apocalyptic weapons pointed at us from all side, so lol, I duno, freedum rokz lol"?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Want to see the societies in the 20th century in which a (real) elite ruled over a helpless population who had no chance of rising, look to all countries that had "socialist", "people's", "democratic" or better yet "democratic people's" in their title. The most repressive country in recorded history? The Democratic People's Republic of Korea. It's even a fucking trope.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Every power center uses an ideological framework to justify itself. The Bolshevics used "communism," the Fasists used national pride and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the Imperialists used "democracy" and "free market" rhetoric. Like the Christian mocking the Muslim you rightly mock one, and then blindly follow another - textbook example of indoctrination.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Which "imperialists" praise free markets? That's another word leftists have gang raped.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Imperialists USE free market RHETORIC as a means to obtain CONSENT from their population so that they may pursue their power expansion. Let me repeat the standard model: A RULING ELITE (wealthy businesses, clergy, military, armed rebel group, crime cartel) fashions an IDEOLOGICAL FRAMEWORK (exporting democracy/markets, GOD, national/racial/class pride, revolution) with which it can JUSTIFY ITS RULING POSITION to the domestic population.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
Socrates was not killed by democracy. Democracy implies everybody has democratic rights and executions remove those democratic rights, therefore the death penalty is always anti-democratic. Furthermore, Amartya Sen has shown that by not having a health care system in place more people died in India than in the GCF and Yeltsin's neoliberal reforms had higher excess deaths than Stalinism. So, comparing atrocities, I'd take democratic societies over Objectivist thinking anyday.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Nope, democracy doesn't say anything about individual rights (prove me wrong) democracy is merely a system of government in which decisions are based upon votes. I thought it was really cute when you said "we all have a vote". A dicks worth of good one person's vote would be in a society of ten million people. The rest of society wants to eat me alive? Bummer. But fear not! I have... one vote. Pff.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You are missing the point (by a few miles). In any system those who make the decisions can decide to murder you. The idea is to spread out the decision making as much as possible thereby spreading (not eliminating) this very risk. Of course the Achilles' heel of the system is propaganda which may instill the ideas of the maker to condition mass thought, which is why so much money is poured by elites into the advertisement industry, with great effect.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano So through your eyes every system has a "murder me" clause built into it? I'm not such a pessimist. I believe that I don't have to yield to the wolves, I don't believe that murder is a fact of life. I favour a system in which murder and voting for murder are forbidden, no matter how "spread out the risk" is. Constitutional republicanism is such a system. Which part of the US constitution says "murder is okay, so long as there's very low probability you'll be the victim"?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution It's not about being pessimistic. It's about facing the fact that your fellow man has the potential to murder you and that this potential throughout history has expressed itself very vividly. Now then obviously you may write in a constitution that it's self evident that everyone is equal and still enslave black people, and you may write that murder is banned and still carry out death sentences like Jack the Ripper on steroids.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
LOl. So according to the objectivst, economics, data, history, is of "no concern." The only thing that matters is the forgotten words of some psuedo-intellectual who admired a serial killer. I don't know what the hell this turd thinks the gold standard is but typing money to gold is a gold standard.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Admired a serial killer? This guy is just I don't know what. Seriously, what the fucking fuck are you talking about? Are you just taking the piss now? Which "serial killer" do I admire?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
Barone's theoretical demonstration renders Mises calculation argument logically defective. Dickinson also pointed this out. If there are Walrasian equations that need solutions there isn't any issue about not being able to price internal products. This is yet another reason why Mises is ignored.
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So, what is the point of these discredited philosophers? There is a reason why the Libertarian/objectivist movement (same thing) is comprised of 20-50 year old men who live with their parents.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Well if you ask Ayn Rand (some people might say she knew a thing or two about Objectivism. I'm not sure why, but apparently she did) Objectivists and libertarians or not one and the same. The fact that a lot of libertarians I speak to seem like the rich man's anarchist and hate Ayn Rand proves that. It seems to be outsiders, often outside trolls *huh hum*, who like to conflate Objectivists and libertarians.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Freedom is hell! A free state is a hell hole! I couldn't take it! Sounds like your the kind of guy who should still be living with his parents.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
Given the choice between democracy and an objectivist hell-hole (which only exists in fantasy land), most people would choose a democracy. In democracy, everybody has a vote, and no citizen can have his rights violated. Objectivism is armed rule by the government to protect the favored elite. It is in this fashion how the mob operates: shaking down citizens to enforce top-to-bottom rule.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Nobody has their rights violated... unless people vote to violate them! Heard about that poor chap called Socrates? I'd say life is the ultimate right. Didn't they vote to take it away? The old adage that democracy is a sheep and two wolves voting on what's for dinner may seem indeed, very old, but it sums up democracy quite nicely. So long as you're a wolf your rights are not violated. God help you if you're a sheep.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
Corporations also make decisions (planning) long before products are introduced into the market. There are very good explanations for why this is, and within corporations themselves choices are not voluntary. Study institutional economics.
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The democratic model is alive and well for many organizations, like Debian GNU/Linux. Worldwide there are millions of people who work on cooperatives, and Germany to some degree practices the democratic model. There a total of 0 objectivist societies.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Sure there are a total of 0 Objectivist societies. There are many theocracies around the world. Speaks worlds to me about what kind of societies (or rather, governing systems) the elite favour: freedom or absolute control over their people... which would they choose? Mmmmmmmmm.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
Libertarianism (esp. objectivism) is based on force and violence. Many corporations have a greater opportunity cost to society than the value of what they're producing. This is just one of many 'market failures.' Libertarians are now saying we shouldn't do anything about global warming because once we move past the "point of no return" it won't matter anyway,i.e., there'd be no reason to try to fight AGW, so we can continue to have "Libertarian property rights," which don't exist. What crap.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Might as well double quote myself (or Ayn Rand,) seems like you derpys never hear the first time: "All kinds of people today call themselves “libertarians,” especially something calling itself the New Right, which consists of hippies, except that they’re anarchists instead of collectivists. But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires absolute objective law, yet they want to combine capitalism and anarchism."
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
"But of course, anarchists are collectivists. Capitalism is the one system that requires objectivie law.."
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Capitalism requires objectivie law and yet anarchism is "collectivist." It's true that capitalism requires a government but it's not true that all other systems are "collectivist" or anti-market. Pareto's student Barone already proved that "market socialism" is indeed possible.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
The problem with Europe is that many of these European have debts denominated in a foreign currency. They have created a gold standard like situation for themselves and if you look at the data you see that the countries that have avoided practicing Austrian austerity are succeeding whereas countries such as Estonia and Latvia have had nothing but trouble with financial austerity. So the countries that are doing the opposite of what a gold standard suggests are succeeding.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
Amazon[dot]com, uses C++. I believe they have many more millions of lines of code for their software than even windows, as an ex-engineer for amazon[dot]com once told me. It's basically a massive shit pile of code. Well, C++ comes from a computer scientist who based his research off of his graduate work and of other technologies created by Bell Labs. So, Amazon's search engine is not an example of the free-market. Nothing is. The free-market has never created anything; it's fantasy.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Well a lot of software is a "massive shit pile of code," I once found a Java class that created an anonymous instance of another class that extended Thread and passed itself as an argument via the this reference and started the thread - in the constructor. Two (subtle) errors on one line of code! But what does that have to do with government? How can you possibly say that Amazon is not the product of a free market? Would Amazon emerge in North Korea?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Give me an example of this code and how it was used. Also, can you show something you've worked on. Where did you get a degree in computer science without having to take an economics class?
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Amazon [dot] com is tens of millions of lines of code. A "free-market" is an economy that exists within the perfect competition, theoretical construct of microeconomics. Not even Milton Friedman's pencil qualifies as being produced on the free-market: most of them are produced in China which has protected, state owned firms.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild I've read plenty of essays about so called "perfect competition", and if I'm not mistaken it means each company works at exactly zero dollars profit! A free market means (are you ready?) a market. That is free. Market: people trade goods as they see fit, voluntarily. Free: no third party is allowed to exert force to remove the "voluntarily" part of the equation. All nonsense about "perfect competition" is of no concern.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
This idiot (SpellboundSolution) keeps bringing up Japan as an example of of the Free-market. Well, as DonVoghano pointed out in regards to Denmark, the Heritage Foundation (who predicted the Bush tax cuts would have cut down the deficit) pulls things out of their ass. Japan engaged in heavy protectionism after WWII, to their BENEFIT, contrary to foolish doctrines of economics. Furthermore, they have always been a mixed economy, more or less, as shown from this excerpt:
successfulbuild 2 months ago
"In addition, due to the financial flexibility afforded by the FILP, Ikeda’s government rapidly expanded government investment in Japan’s infrastructure: building highways, high-speed railways, subways, airports, port facilities, and dams. Ikeda's government also expanded government investment in the communications sector of the Japanese economy previously neglected. Each of these acts continued the Japanese trend towards managed economy that epitomizes the mixed economic model."
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Well if you're interested in understanding economic advances in Japan then you could read something beyond your favourite leftard blog like I have. Read We Were Burning, real stories from real people, not outside observations from people who want to believe the same things you believe. And welcome back uncompilable, I wondered where you'd gone.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild And I don't know if you've noticed that as Japan has moved from freedom towards Keynesianism (see the Index of Economic Freedom) they've moved from "formidable economic power" to "state suffering two lost decades". Whoopsy daisy.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Japan has always had somewhat of a mixed economy and the US controlled over 70% of its oil imports up until the 70s to give it "veto power" in international affairs.
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As for my citing of a blog where the author knows what he's talking about (Social democracy for the 21st century), you have cited a total of ZERO economists. Name an economist who favors tying money to gold. Where are your sources that show a better growth rate for the Gilded Age.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Always my favourite wake up call. Morning sb. At no point have I said I favour "gold money", instead I favour a money supply limited by gold and held at value to prevent inflation by being backed by real physical gold. I'm not saying we should revert to the time when we all walked around with easy-to-chip-at gold coins. I've got a feeling that a Solyndra scandal wouldn't work if money was as precious as I propose though. Only fiat currency allows a Solyndra.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution That is pretty ridiculous has they've seen better growth than many other so-called free-market societies. What numbers are you using. Provide your sources, little turd.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Little turd? Sorry I can't track what what question you were responding to then. Little turd. lol. Very mature.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
Spellbound solution is engaging in his typical lying, quite common for a member of the objectivst cult. (For a refutation of objectivism google Ayn Rand contra human nature, be sure and read the hilarious adventures of one of them infiltrating an objectivist cult meeting),.
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The twentieth century had the greatest wealth creation AND the largest economic expansion, largely because the Federal Reserve curtailed the boom and bust cycle. It was deregulation which brought it back.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
The United States killed about 3 million victims in Indochina, and was largely responsible for Pol Pot coming to power, even giving him support when he escaped to Taiwan, including Reagan. And the Reagan administration supported Suharto who killed half a million of his own people and led a 30+ year war against Timor. Plus you have 3+ million in Latin America. Google: "state of the intellectual left social democracy" and read my comments. (And read the blog to see Austrian economics debunked.)
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild So if genocide occurs anywhere in the world, committed by any tyrant, motivated by any ideology, the United States is always to blame nonetheless?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
This type of analysis is so empty! Exactly what lesson are we to learn from this mystical "decline of violence?" It's the usual loose sequence of more or less accurate data with a rather shallow interpretation from a moderate, provincial status quo point of view, ultimately reinforcing the status quo. It's not as bold as philosophy and not as rigorous as science: in short it's a waste of precious effort, culminating in an intellectual cul-de-sac.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano We can learn a lot of things from this. First of all it debunks the romantic fallacy, as the greatest decline in violence came after the creation of the first states. Furthermore, it shows that a world in where private leaders have absolute control (feudalism, private armies) there generally is more violence. A political science interpretation of even the twentieth century confirms this.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Or looking at which states respected individual rights/let people be vs which states had governments which used their privilege of a monopoly on force to work for the "good" of the people. Which societies thrived and which were hell on earth, without a single exception?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild The data is too weak, scattered and biased to propose a more general Hobbsian view of a "savage" hunter gatherer. I'd say the prehistorical truth lies somewhere in between. Now the state is born as an act of violence and conquest and in its nascent phase naturally sets up extreme violence, which is then slowly metabolized by a long social bargaining process. In my view, then, yes, violence declines, but from an original peak initiated by state formation itself.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Given that prior assumptions of human nature in the "state of nature" were based on speculation (the conflict between Hobbes and Rousseau or Hobbes and Locke), and modern assumptions are based on forensic archeology and analyzing skulls for fractures and so on, I fail to see how this doesn't qualify as "scientific." It is certainly more scientific, than say, economics, which is mostly abstract mathematical nonsense.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild Economics is worse than that: it's meaningless mathematical models in service of ideology. Modern assumptions on the other hand are too partial to get a realistic picture and should rather encourage a healthy dose of agnosticism. By analyzing the Yanomami vs Mbuti, or pre- vs post- columbian natives you get very different pictures, just as you might be exaggerating by extrapolating the findings of a bone pit to the whole of humanity at the time.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano If you go back and read through the comments before I started arguing with these two imbeciles I gave some implications it has for international relations as well. As for "reinforcing the status quo" -- that's not necessarily a bad thing. Keep in mind many Libertarians advocate returning to a gold standard based on fallacious assumptions like that "fiat moeny encourages wars," etc., Social democracies tend to be less violent than say, Pinochet's Chile as well.
successfulbuild 2 months ago
@successfulbuild "Libertarian", "gold standard" I suppose it's the third and fourth time respectively that I have tell you that I support neither (there's a difference between the cop out term "gold standard" and real value backed currency that can be readily traded with gold.) If I'm I'm an imbecile then what are you?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild And I love arrogant turd holes like you who can't get through a sentence without boasting about how smart they are while constantly telling everybody else how stupid they are. Provides a reminder to me that I'm not a cretin, although provides a reminder that such people do exist. There's pros and cons to everything I guess.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@successfulbuild So-called "Libertarians" are just vomiting mindless propaganda and advocacy of mass slavery. It takes 4 seconds to debunk that load of shit. Of course a social democratic state is incomparably better than a so-called "free market" feudal nightmare. That said one should not discount the possibility of alternative institutions that could further erode/dissolve state power and unnecessary hierarchy into more humane variants.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Tell that to the 20th Century. Also why has uncompilable stopped spamming me? Don't love me any more?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution What about the 20th century? In proportion to the population it's true that it wasn't as bloody as any given century from the 12th on, at least as far as Europeans and their offshoots are concerned.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Fraid not. To the extent that countries were free they were bloodless. Compare Europe post WWII: which half was prosperous(ish, they became more prosperous as we threw away government controls in the 80s) and secure and which part had people risking their lives to leave it? Eeyup the evil capitalist "feudalist" half and the glorious socialist "democratic" halves respectively.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution 1st off everyone agrees on the basic fact that the 20th century, at least for Europe, is not the bloodiest. However here you add some claims that you should carefully verify. For example the 80s marked the beginning of stagnation and a boom in sovereign debt for most industrialized countries of the Western block, and govt controls, which were necessary and justified, were only selectively eroded in favor of finance leading to 3 decades of boom/bust cycles.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano I'm not quite sure I read that correctly, are you saying the financial sector is free in the West? Look back to every financial crisis and you'll find the ugly face of government intervention somewhere (the most recent crisis being the result of the American government's obsession with everyone owning a home and forcing banks to give them loans they couldn't pay back.)
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution I know your position, it's wrong at the core. That "free market" crap is so childish I won't even go into it. You have to look at POWER, the deciding factor on how "free" anyone can be. Any concentration of power, be it ideology, violence or wealth must be distributed or broken up or it will negate liberty. That is the essence of true libertarianism going back 5000 years, without all that ridiculous Ayn Rand "free market" bullshit.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Well if you believe that keeping what you earn is "childish crap" I'll send you my address and you can give me 10% of your earnings. Keeping all of it is clearly quite childish. And how many rooms of your home my I rent out? I believe you have too much power owning it all yourself. Don't give some crap like "you earned it"; too much power and derpa derpa derp. Silly me, people like you can never live by your own moral code.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution I said what I wrote: NECESSARY govt controls were SELECTIVELY ERODED in FAVOR of finance. Meaning that the banks used the state in their interest and fucked everyone else. I.E.: from the '30s to the Carter years there were NO FINANCIAL CRISES, from the Carter/Reagan years to today it's a never ending stream of bubbles and busts. Govt and financial institutions are different power centers, both extremely dangerous if left unchecked.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Is finance the most regulated sector of the US economy? That's a simple yes no question. Answer the question. Also is high tech the freest sector of the economy (or one of the freest)? If the answers are yes for both questions is it a coincidence the former has been a catastrophe for too many years to count and the latter has been a success from day one?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Are you using the hi-tech sector as an example of free market? By Odin, brother, every technological advancement of the past 100 years has depended almost entirely on the State sector. About financial regulation it MUST be in place, it very much should be the most regulated sector. But then again one might look at the wording of the regulation, most of it is a late addition aimed at weakening simpler, cleaner rules in place before.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano "By Odin, brother, every technological advancement of the past 100 years has depended almost entirely on the State sector" well I think you may be mistaking me for somebody else as I don't have a brother, but I'll be intrigued to hear you back up that claim.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano From bipolar, thin film and field effect transistors to liquid crystal displays and quartz clocks every piece of high technology we take for granted was made by greedy profit seekers in America and quite a few in Japan. Search Amazon (made by government?) for "We Were Burning". Even if you don't want to hear the truth about how entrepreneurs created all the great leaps of technology it's great read if you're tech-obsessed nerd.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Universities (and the whole education system more generally in the past 100 years) have been mostly founded and maintained by states, regardless of the formal structure. True from Cambridge, UK to MIT, USA. Radar, jet engine, computers, internet, lasers, you name it, all grew because of massive state financing and long incubation periods under a military guise or another.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano And I know what you're going to say next: the government made the internet. All I can say is this: they didn't. The government's involvement in what we call "the internet" today, from Amazon to YouTube, via our cable and broadband modems and wireless routers is paltry to irrelevant and would have been driven by the market if the communists weren't planning to nuke us (leading to internet 0.00000001.)
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano In what way is a bank a centre of "power"? Last time I checked power required weapons. So long as banks can't pay the government off they have no power. The mixed economy and the regulatory system you favour is what gives them power. Power is for sale right now and everyone from CEOs to union leaders buy it. A separation of economy and state will solve that problem. End economic theocracy today!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Power does not require weapons. Power is defined as the ability to control the environment and other people. Knowledge and wealth properly used are as effective an instrument of control as a shotgun. That is why the laws of property, perfectly applied can easily generate a de-facto enslaved serf, while a good demagogue can create a religion or political party and control a nation.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano What a load of shite. Also the only reason we have never had a true free market system is because the elite hates it. Why? Because it leaves us all free! It's such a simple concept no wonder you don't understand it. Don't drawl on about this bullshit of power in private hands, nobody has power over you if the people with guns leave you alone. You are not a serf if you are free to start a business and keep your earnings. What a fucking retarded thing to say.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution It's such a simple concept that it's just not true. It would be true if people were rational machines maximizing self-interest. They are not. Human beings are moved entirely by pre-rational urges (such as your urge to live, fuck and sing, ever though about how irrational all that is?), which they then backwards-rationalize. Assume that they are rational maximizers of self-interest and you will just have the most irrational society possible.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Property intrinsically generates slaves. Ever heard of indentured serfs? They still exist today. What exactly in a world ruled by contracts protects a debtor from becoming a de facto slave to the creditor? "Bankruptcy" and "debt jubilee" are nothing but government constraints! That's why you have to man up an accept austerity packages from Cameron while England tanks with the rest of us in Europe.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Property creates salves? Almost as cute as that ever popular oxymoron "wage slave". What was the wage of the historic salve? Oh yeah, £0.00. In the real world property always exists, the question is who owns it, the self appointed elite or the individual? I support individual property rights. Destroy individual property rights and property doesn't fly out the window like an obedient pixie.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The objective should not necessarily be the destruction of "property rights" but the limitation of power concentrations (that's the whole point of the three branches of govt stuff, you know, just an extension of the same valid concept). Once power is kept in line, then each individual can blossom. By the very laws of credit, property tends to concentrate, it's vital to create a countermeasure. Places like Denmark have pretty successfully understood this.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano The "limitation of power concentration"? You taking from the producers what you can't produce yourself? If there's one thing I admire about Marxists it's your wonderful use of language. I suppose when you're advocating nationwide theft you can't afford to be upfront and honest. Marxists: the world's most eloquent burglars.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution As soon as you don't get something you revert back to that old barking "Commie" business, which I honestly find offensive and demeaning of your intelligence. It's hard to explain relatively complicated matters in 500 words, reality is a bit more loaded than "LOL TEH MARKET WILL FIX IT LOL."
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Yeah, fuck the 500 words limit, but if I had a choice between LULZ TEH MARKIT and LULZ TEH GUBMENT I'd choose LULZ TEH MARKIT any day of the week. That is unless we're talking about preserving rights and keeping the peace. The concept of a marketplace of force is the wacky and dangerous idea the prevents me from calling myself a libertarian. We need a government to monopolize force; a marketplace of violence is called civil war.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Anyway sorry if I've been calling you names or whatever it's just so frustrating sometimes. And when I come upon somebody who seems to be a anarchist-statist hybrid it moves from mere frustrating to downright confusing.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution I'm not a "statist" or a "hybrid" or whatever. I look at the outcomes and I look at history. That whole "free market" fairy tale is simply untrue, it's just an ideological tool waved around by the elites, precisely like Bolshevism. Not a surprising fact that douche bags of all colors from Reagan to Obama have been abusing the term. That alone should ring a fucking bell. Ever since it rose again to prominence in the 70s freedom globally has been eroded.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano What member of an historic elite has favoured freedom for the people? That's like saying communists get a boner when they think about the profit motive. You and uncompilable below just need to do a little bit of reading and finally understand what "free market" actually means: letting people decide what they want to buy and sell without the gun of a third party sticking in their face the whole time. No elite would voluntarily sacrifice the gun. Never have. Never will.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Also I'd like to finally put an end to daft stereotypes of Denmark and other Northern European countries as being socialist paradises that leftist Americans jerk off to: check the Index of Economic Freedom; Denmark is more capitalist then America!!!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution That index is from the Heritage Foundation and its worthless, a vademecum for delocalization basically. In Denmark college is free and students receive a stipend, the unemployed are paid for and retrained by the govt until they find an equal or better job, universal health care is state run and top notch; taxation is very high and so is distribution of income. That's what a democratic govt should do, though there is still much room for improvement.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano And you live in Italy if I'm not mistaken. I'm very impressed about how much you know about Denmark. Denmark certainly leaves a lot to be desired, like all Western European countries they're spending themselves into oblivion and have gotten used to the idea that money is infinite since it's worthless (it isn't and it's not) but they are not the kind of society you crave for. And how can an anarchist praise government run education?!?! What kind of anarchist are you?!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Govt education is better than church and private education on an absolute scale. I've seen all 3 in 3 continents and I stand by this statement. Although I myself "never let my schooling interfere with my education."
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Just because government has a monopoly, or borderline monopoly on education in the west doesn't mean government education is better. In England all the rich people send their kids to the few private schools we have. Guess what? They're much better off. It's very hard to say the product of a monopoly is the best possible as you've never seen the product of the competitor.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Also John Stossel did a program on American union controlled schools vs some European schools in which parents could pick and choose where their children went. Again a tiny, tiny element of freedom and competition entered the equation as opposed of the 100% force backed, government monopolized American system. Guess which one worked better? Can't guess? Well watch the program. It's available on YouTube. Bit depressing though.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution John Stossel is another fraud who made millions spinning that "free market" bullshit. Once again, when a mainstream news anchor makes millions repeating a line, bells should start ringing as loud as Hiroshima. I tried to watch his shit but it feels a bit like listening to Catholic radio here in Italy: unless you are a religious fanatic it's just an insult to your brain.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Seriously just look up free market and understand what it even means. It's clearly just two words strung together for people like you. You'd do a lot to learn. I'm not counting on you learning anything or pulling you head out of the sand (or your own arse) but I can try. Learn. What free market. Means. Learn before you bleat on about how "crap" it is and ignore everything around you what little freedom there is has created and ignore human history.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution I grew up in the US, absorbed the indoctrination of the anglosphere, and for a while I was just like you. But unlike you I did not limit my sources to the Heritage/Mises/Rand/Friedman bunch. I'm of the idea that all claims should be investigated. So I looked up Adam Smith and immediately noticed many differences. I then proceeded to look at the theory and practice of modern "free market" advocates and I was intellectually unsatisfied and morally disgusted.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Actually it was the opposite way round for me. It's said that if you're not a Marxist by the time you're 16 you have no heart, if you're still a Marxist by the time you're 20 you have no brain. I have a heart and a brain. I was of the naive "we can all share everything" mindset until I started earning, and then "sharing" suddenly turned into "stealing". When I became the victim of my own ideology it dawned on me it was immoral.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Yes, you are misquoting Churchill, a man who never hid his great respect for Hitler and Stalin. I have no respect for a man who presented moral bankruptcy as if it were intelligence. I earn too and of all the morally despicable things I see, sharing truly seem the least. You want to justify your own immorality and claim it's intellect like Churcy, go right ahead. Surely private vices will lead to public goods.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano When did I say anything about Churchill? If you check Wikiquote you'll find that Churchill never said anything like it. People often invent quotes or pick them out of magazines and newspaper articles and then attributed them to people they like. In this case it was misattributed to Churchill. For me the only thing that matters is the quote itself. And boy, is it ever true!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution It's not true at all, it's simply moral bankruptcy. It's basically saying that while you are young you believe in a moral society (heart) and by the time you get old you should have understood it's hopeless and switched to minding your own interest and fucking off society (brain).
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano How is leaving people alone the same as "fucking off" from them? Do you honestly appreciate people sticking their noses into your life the whole time? I thought that once you become an adult you could live your own life just fine. There's nothing wrong with helping people so long as you want to, just don't force your will on them. Remember: not all people want your help. I know I don't.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Morality demands first that you do no harm, but as a second best option. The moral person should try his best, according to his means, to help his fellow man. When you see a wounded woman on the street your impulse is not to "leave her alone" but to lend aid. The principle generalizes.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Stop playing word games, you know perfectly well what I mean by "leave alone": I mean don't point your gun at my head and tell me what to do and pull the trigger if I say no. Helping other people is fine.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution There will always be people pointing metaphorical guns at your face. Repeating that you wanna be free is not gonna do anything to prevent it. The only way to prevent it is to make sure that no individual or group thereof has the ability to point that proverbial gun. A relative level of equality is a prerequisite for justice, this is an axiom that goes back to the Greeks.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Try not paying your taxes. The man wearing black who comes to your door will not be carrying a metaphorical gun with him.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano When we live in a society in which justice is based upon theft what schmuck will work and create wealth? If morality is based on the precept the able will provide for the needy who will put themselves forward as needy and who will put themselves forward as able? In short in a system of masters and slaves who would volunteer to be a slave? Atlas has quietly shrugged throughout history, that's why we've always remained in the mud. Freedom lifts us.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The only way to serenity is a deep personal pursuit of morality through learning and introspection. Giving it up to pursue status and material gain just makes life into a living hell.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano I don't try to "pursue status", I keep to myself most of the time. Politicians try to pursue status. And I'm glad that I live in a society where there is at least a semblance of freedom left. Do you know in North Korea people have radios with dials held in place that are checked regularly to make sure people haven't adjusted them. If the checker can't find your radio it's assumed you've hidden it and you're thrown in a death camp to have chemical weapons tested on you.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You pursue status, everyone does. It's just part of our biological programming, just like morality and the capacity for language. Nietzsche called it "Wille zur Macht." Some people do it more, some less. Western culture and its institutions, being extremely violent, values such behavior and encourages it through its ideologies and penalizes moral and altruistic behavior by branding it as weak or harmful.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano I've never taken Nietzsche's ideas too seriously. He's the man who claimed we should look to the god of drunkenness before the god of light and knowledge. No, I don't "pursue status". The day you know me personally is the day you can correct me on that.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano A rather extreme example, granted, but that's the kind of heart-driven society that results when nobody is allowed to be left alone. When "freedom" is synonymous with "fucking off". Why is leaving people free and granting them privacy if they want it so unreasonable? By what right can you interfere with other people lives and take away their privacy and freedom?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You have a need for and a responsibility towards your environment and other living things. You are not an island and will never live in a bubble no matter how many times you repeat to yourself that you wanna be "left alone." The only way to a meaningful existence is to accept the burden of Atlas. If Atlas shrugs, the world collapses.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano If Atlas Shrugged the world collapses. Guess you never read the novel, did you? That was the whole point! The productive people were sick to the back teeth of being spat at and withdrew from society and let it crumble without them, but it didn't mean that they owed a debt to all of society for everything they'd worked to create. That's like saying we have every graffiti artist to thank for every masterpiece of art. Quite ridiculous if you really think about it.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution In the complex web of interactions of society it's not ridiculous at all. Graffiti art takes from many sources, including the masterpieces of classic artwork, the flashy imagery of advertisement as well as being a reaction to the gray inhumanity of the modernist architecture that imprisons poor people living in post-war "hoods."
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Analogy okay, analogy. What you were saying is in a society of geniuses and dunces the productive geniuses who create industrial empires (yikes! So much poooooower! Let's smash it to pieces for our own good!) owe everything to the dunces because... because. But luckily due the madness of that argument at least every dunce owes everything back. And everything to every other dunce.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Work was never meant to create wealth. That's a distortion of power systems. Work is just another way of applying our creativity and ingenuity in the process of surviving. Industrial empires are only useful insofar as they better living conditions. In Victorian England, for examples, they made life incomparably worse, and only through bloody union struggles has any benefit actually reached the public at large.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Well if the industrial revolution was so bad why did people choose to work? They could have stayed on the farms if they wanted to. Jobs existed before the industrial revolution. The idea that we have unions to thank for wealth is beyond laughable.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Anyway this is getting tiresome now. The only argument that is needed is reality and history: look at where the world is free. Look at where people have been left free to create and where they know they can keep the fruits of their earnings. In those places people have grown to be wealthy with or without unions or any of the other things the left claims are needed to create wealth. All I can say to you is don't argue with me, argue with reality.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The world is not free, you and I are only free in comparison to a disgusting past. Wealth historically has been created ALWAY in gross violation of market principles, from Imperialist Britain and continuing with the slavery, civil war and isolationism of the USA. Markets have ever only worked in conditions of relative equality, which is the principle behind Ordoliberalism and Social Democracy. THAT is reality, and you can check it for yourself.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano The idea that wealth was create in times of slavery and oppression is also rather tiresome and simply doesn't stand up to the facts of reality. It's just melodramatic nonsense the left would have us believe. I don't see slavery driving the semiconductor industry. In the real world slavery COULDN'T drive the semiconductor industry. Just wouldn't work.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Oh my God. The US developed from a rural wasteland to a global power during the mid 1800s thanks to civil war and a hyper-protectionist policy that sealed the US market for 70 years. Before that it was one of the many slave nations that supplied British industry with what it needed for its own "revolution." US slavery served UK needs, ever heard of cotton, the engine of the industrial revolution? Again, UNCONTROVERSIAL, EASILY OBTAINABLE DATA.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano And those notorious "robber barons"? Did they succeed due to hyper protectionism or the absolute freedom the left acknowledged existed and they hated? Of course I'm sure you'll say the robber barons who never robbed anything from anyone never created any value for themselves. They didn't create new industries, new means of transportation, ten of thousands of jobs or anything. Also the UK abolished slavery in 1806. Eighteen. O. Six.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano And all the incredible wealth that was created in economical free 20th century countries, but not socialist countries. The 20th century was the first one in which slavery was universally outlawed. Your claim that slavery leads to wealth (why haven't we been rich for the last 10,000 years?!) simply doesn't hold water there.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You guys can only argue with these strawmen. I never said slavery creates wealth, what I say, completely uncontroversially, is that Western industry developed in nations which abused overseas empires as a source of raw materials. Without cotton and sugar plantations farmed by slaves or serfs THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION COULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. Just like without military control of the Middle East our oil-based economy would collapse. UNfuckingCONTROVERSIAL.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano What a load of bollocks. How do you know the Industrial Revolution couldn't have happened? Mankind has practiced slavery for tends of thousands of years, the Industrial Revolution occurred after the Enlightenment and the introduction of economic freedom. You don't need slavery for industry (strawman? Sounds like that's what you jut said) you just. Need. Freedom.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano If I'm wrong then explain to me why the Industrial Revolution occurred when it did and where it did. Complete fluke that it happened on the first part of the world that saw freedom? Personally I'd say it was no fluke.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Freedom existed well before the industrial revolution. The Iroquois for example had quite a peaceful and free society, with an effective system of managing resources and conflict. The need for rapid industrial growth has less to do with freedom and more to do with power, as rabid competition and hundreds of years of extremely bloody conflicts between European nations required a quick and constant upping of economic and military influence at any cost.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Freedom did not exist before the Enlightenment. A few religious communes and tribes with highly strict rules do not count as "free", not by any stretch of the imagination! And the Industrial Revolution was essentially Development 1.0. It was revolutionary because it was the first time it happened, but not the last. See the charts I've given you. Whenever countries, from Japan to Chile, have become free they have industrialized and developed.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Also what about my two charts? You claim that slavery = wealth, I claim that freedom = wealth. The graphs back up my claim. You can check the numbers if you want, they're available online. How do you explain the drift from development to stagnation as countries drift from freedom to non-freedom?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Keynes had promised growth and stability in exchange for a minor redistribution of income. Afraid of the fascist/communist alternatives Western elites accepted, only to later regret it as higher culture and quality of life were quickly leading to the generalized questioning of privileges and institutions of power. The shift to a financial economy and Friedmanite free-market doctrine accompanied by massive propaganda was the tool elected to fix the problem.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Keynes indeed promised, too bad he didn't deliver! You can't tell me with a straight face that Keynesianism has worked? And again let's drop cute euphemisms like "redistribution"; it is called theft, and nationwide theft can hardly be called "minor". Minor theft (or "wealth redistribution") is carried out by a pick pocket, not a government mad on Keynes.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Keynes did what he said he would. Permitted a long period of relatively stable growth without any major infringement on the privileges of the elites. Sadly he did not deliver the submission of the masses that the elites always strive to obtain. It was commercial propaganda that delivered that, so Keynes was dumped and elites focused their efforts on advertising as a means to hide and further their privileges.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano This talk about "elites" is also very tiresome. Are not the political class "elites" too? Do you believe that those who wield (real) guns favour freedom? No, elites do not favour freedom. If elites control everything then mankind should have been free throughout all our history. We always have to fight and struggle for freedom and it wears away if we don't keep fighting for it. "Elites" favour government privileges and power, not freedom.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The political class are elites, so are high level military figures and state bureaucrats, the wealthy are elites, and major intellectuals and heads of ideological institutions (churches, think tanks etc) are elites.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Wealthy business owners favor government. They pay lip service to "free market" ideology when it suits them, and then cry to nanny state when the shit hits the fan. They demand special privileges, credit and protection from the collective as "the productive part of society," but claim any and all profit as their own.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
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@DonVoghano "Wealthy business owners favor government. They pay lip service to "free market" ideology when it suits them, and then cry to nanny state when the shit hits the fan." Some do, some don't, but if you understand that then why don't you favour the free market? Are you still just refusing to understand what a free market is? Those businessman who favour the nanny state would lose if the nanny state didn't exist!
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The shift can be observed quite clearly. From the mid '70s Keynesian economics was quickly dropped in favor of the Chicago school of Friedman. The ascent of the "free market" school culminated in 1976 as Friedman was awarded the Nobel. The advent of the Friedmanite school coincides with the financialization of the economy and liberalization of capital movements internationally, as well as 40 years of stagnation culminating in the current crisis.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Do you know how bad things were in the 1970s? They even invented a new term in the decade: stagflation. Few people supported free markets but it was considered the lesser of two evils. Basically Keynes has fucked us in the arse, these horrid businessmen will have to be given a chance again. I'd say that was the right thing to do. I can't put in 500 words how every crisis since then can trace its roots to government involvement, but it can.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You look at countries that are economically successful AND socially decent today and it's EXCLUSIVELY, and let me stress EXCLUSIVELY, countries which have adopted an Ordoliberal or Social-Democratic economic model for most of the 20th century.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Doesn't it strike you as odd that mummy and daddy tell the child in the sandbox to "share" the car, but when somebody comes along and tries to "share" mummy and daddy's car they immediately call the police? If that toddler could conjure the words he would call it hypocrisy and cynicism. That is what morally disgusts me. I'm simply morally consistent. I don't live for anyone else or ask them to live for me. Live and let live. Is that so disgusting?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution The only reason why you can claim to be an anarchist is that the term has been emptied of meaning. There is a continuum of demolition of dogma and prerogatives of power starting with the reformation and furthering free, critical and moral thought. Smith and Hume, Mill and Bentham, Humboldt and Proudhon, Kropotkin and Bakunin, Dewey and Chomsky, just to name a few REAL INTELLECTUALS with a monumental personal culture and near spotless moral conduct...
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano When the hell did I claim to be an anarchist?! We need government. The sad truth is there will alway be people who initiate force. And so long as there is such a thing as aggressive force there will need to be defensive force. I think it's better to delegate that use of defensive force to what Pinker describes as "a disinterested third patty" with a privilege of a monopoly of the use of force. Can you imagine how horrible a marketplace of force would look?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Err... party.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution You see that your position is incoherent? If a state with monopoly on violence exists then powerful economic actors can and will use their influence to buy it and use it to increase their influence over society. Mind you this happened OVER AND OVER in history. Power won't give a shit about your free market ideals, if it can abuse its position to increase its influence it will always do so.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Well there is a very, very simple solution to that problem. Can you figure it out? REMOVE FORCE FROM THE MARKETPLACE!!!!!!! If government force can not be bought and sold then no amount of money can by favours. Michael Moore has a national holiday named after a TV program for $5,000 (not exactly Fortune 500) money. It doesn't have to be that way.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano For people who use that moronic adage "money is power", "money is" whatever is for sale. In Medieval times money wasn't a plasma television because plasma televisions weren't on the market. In a real capitalist country money isn't power because power isn't on the market. If politicians and bureaucrats aren't selling power then power can't be bought. This is so simple I just don't know why people can't understand it.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@SpellboundSolution Money is the power to obtain resources. Since life depends on resources, money is power. It's not so hard to get.
DonVoghano 2 months ago
@DonVoghano What is a "resource"? For thousands of years what we call crude oil was a well pollutant that made water inedible. It took thinking people to turn it into the black gold it is today. I'm bored to tears of hearing about "resources". The only real resource is the human mind and if a person chooses to sell their mind they every right to do so. Resources, money and personal freedom are not power, a gun pointed at your face is.
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago
@DonVoghano Objectivists are not anarchists just because we advocate freedom and a lack of aggression. There is a big difference between non-aggressiveness and pacifism. If somebody punches you in the face you don't turn the other cheek, you punch back twice as hard. Just never throw the first punch. Why do so few people not understand the distinction between defensive and aggressive force?
SpellboundSolution 2 months ago