Hayek: Fighting the Planners part 1 of 4

[tonymartini666]

Isn't that Montgomery Mall shown in the film???

[RunLiberty]

Ron Paul 2012 for President

[TheVoiceOfReason93]

Whenever anyone has this idea, remember the lessons of Thomas Hobbes - people are inherently greedy and exploitive, always putting self interest ahead of everything else. Try giving them full freedom and they would end up running around like animals

[Malthus0]

@TheVoiceOfReason93

Surely you do not subscribe to Hobbsian egoism. That is a very simplistic way of looking at human nature. Even if it was true the Leviathan state is not the answer. As Hobbsian egoists will act badly whenever they are not being watched by the state. The only to logical positions left are to leave people in the state of nature or to create a omnipotent totalitarian state. Then you have to trust the sovereign not to act like a bastard like everybody else does.

[aviomaster]

Freedom ,,, that is what USA has for Iraq and Afganistan ...

Freedom where 1.3 million Iraqis died and 150.000 Afganis ...

Plus 4 million Iraqis left Iraq ,, and now are refugees ...

[Research0digo]

3:12 - look, it's an early Einstein trolley! (relatively speaking)  ^_^

[brheas]

jocam000 has discovered the great truth!

[jocam000]

No one worth listening to is speaking on a you tube comment section, especially when it comes to anything important.

[FAHayek89]

Actually, that isn't quite what Smith argued. Do you also find that David Hume and Edmund Burke were nothing more than hacks?

[Arjozof]

You seem to be one obsessed son of a gun!

[Amiduffer]

As obsessed as the idiot savants running Wall St. and their obsession with multi-million $ bonus' while the rest of the population becomes impoverished.

[Arjozof]

who gave them money? guvment did. Who elected guvment? the people who got impoverished did. who's responsible? the intellectuals are.

[Amiduffer]

Bernanke, Geithner, Summers, & Paulson are all Wall St. operatives who act on its behalf, not the government OR the people since they've bankrupted both. And if you went along with that kind of system, then that proved that you aren't an intellectual. More of a prostitute.

[Arjozof]

but government never is "the people". it's a parasitic class with monopoly on force, so it's no wonder they use it to fill their own coffers. what is strange is why people allow them to, and allow them to expand the governmental power.

instead of obsessive-maniacal stalking of Hayek on youtube, you should read Murray Rothbard's "For A New Liberty", which is an excellent analysis of what government is, and why it is evil, and what is going on with the world.

[Amiduffer]

I found Rothbard to be a liar. Willing to play loose with facts in order to promote a bunch of criminals who wish to have no one around to police their thieving.

[Arjozof]

how exactly was he a liar? in what respect? Facts!

It was Rothbard, who kept condemning the real BUNCH OF CRIMINALS in the most thieving institutions there are - government departments.

Because where public money is - there you'll find the criminals. That's why big government with big budget = BIG THIEVERY.

Simply, there is no other alternative, then to limit government to the most tiny minute fraction of what it is nowadays - then it won't attract criminals.

[Amiduffer]

Do I have to listen to that fool again!? One of your fellows pointed me to a recording of a class he gave, and it was your typical academic mish mash of half baked theories and out of context "facts" that reminded me of Howard Zinns warped portrayal of American history. Repackaged Smith, Bentham, Mandeville and the other British Empire propagandists.

[Arjozof]

Nope. Rothbard is far from being "typical academic mish mash" and he was always radically anti-imperialistic, as a true Libertarian.

His 4 volume "Conceived in Liberty" is the epitome of libertarian historiography, where he denounces British Empire for what it was.

So I can't really understand where do you get this obsession :D

[Amiduffer]

If he was truely "anti imperialistic", he wouldn't be promoting Libertarianism which is just another economic religion that the British created.

[Arjozof]

That's a proof of how ignorant in the history of ideas you are.

Libertarianism isn't economic, it's metapolitical philosophy, which includes the theory of the state, the relations of state to the individual, and its effects on the loss of individual freedom.

And libertarianism was born on the American soil, among the British colonists, who longed for freedom from the English crown. How that makes libertarianism "British imperialism apology", hm?

Besides, what is wrong with economics?

[Amiduffer]

Sheesh. You don't even know where your philosophy CAME from!

[Arjozof]

From Aristotle. and from Nature.

yours is some sort of an artificial demented diabolism, which seems to get nowhere at all :D

[Amiduffer]

Wait, you're saying Aristotle was born 230 years ago!?

[Arjozof]

nope, Founding Fathers were influenced by Aristotle, and used reason to discover the natural rights of man - the right to liberty, to property, to life and to pursue happiness.

Do you reject these natural rights? Would you want us to bend knees to some arbitrary tyranny or mob rule?

[Amiduffer]

Reason and Aristotle are two mutually exclusive concepts, much as it is with most libertarians. The founding fathers read all the classics, not just Aristotle. The concept "life, liberty, and happiness" is a Leibnizian concept, and he was certainly an enemy of Aristotle.

[Garhunt05]

@Arjozof ... acutally Libertarianism - it's core ideas anyway, originated in france. which at the time was the intellectual center of the world. and I find it strange that you say they longed for it yet lived under it for more than 100 years with little to no dissent among them. and how many of these americans practiced the same thing that the crown was doing just on a much smaller scale.

Economics is at best a flawed science and at worse not a science at all.

[Arjozof]

@Garhunt05 Didn't originate in France, the Lockean tradition is older and British, while the core of economic science was formulated by late Spanish Scholastics.

Much of today's libertarian ideas is directly contained in American Declaration of Independence. So, basically, you're wrong.

And economics at best is AUSTRIAN ECONOMICS, and is not flawed. Humans are.

So as you can see, tradition of Liberty is not confined to one nation nor place.

[Garhunt05]

@Arjozof lol at Austrian economics you know saying *blank* is not flawed humans are is exactly what communists say. word for word.

[Arjozof]

@Garhunt05 You have just shown how uneducated you are in the economics field. Any serious person studying economics, who came across writings of Ludwig von Mises, von Hayek and Rothbard, can say that THIS IS SOUND ECONOMICS. And it is us, Austrian economists, who predicted the house bubble crisis in the USA, public debt crisis in Greece, and the Great Crisis which is coming (and involves unfunded liabilities). Why?

Because Austrian Economics is a study of human action - not mathematic models.

[Garhunt05]

@Arjozof pardon me for not being an economist but you sir are practicing eliteism of a very high order.  I have come across their writings and I find what they are saying to be overly hopeful and negating the negativity associated with power through accumulated wealth. Austian economics would lead to feudalism

[stealthswimmer]

Actually, no it's not, lol. Where do people even get this stuff? Rothbard was an anarcho-capitalist and was an advocate of shrinking the state, including the fighting of imperialistic wars.

[Amiduffer]

So you admit that he's just a shill for the financial scum who wish to kill off the population and loot entitlements.

[stealthswimmer]

No, I didn't say or even imply that anywhere. NIce try though....wait, actually no. Your "try" wasn't even that good.

[Amiduffer]

You better wake up to reality. Bankers are just as dictatorial. Look how they're trying to impose debt slavery on Iceland in order to cover their Ponzi scheme.

[stealthswimmer]

You better wake up to reality. :p

Bankers are protected by government. There isn't any way to impose "debt slavery" on anyone if they don't take on debt. However, when banks are guaranteed bailouts, they engage in riskier behavior, including lower rates than they otherwise would and end up often having to raise them later, not to mention the constantly rising prices that make borrowing more profitable than it really is.

[Amiduffer]

Debt for gambling and speculation is not something you enslave a population for.

[stealthswimmer]

Agreed, and that's why they shouldn't have been protected by government to do it....

There's no "enslavement" they can do in a marketplace. The "enslavement" comes from the theft that the state uses to plunder the people and then help out firms that are "too big to fail" because they don't realize that such firms are too big to bail out.

[Amiduffer]

Agreed. All the Wall St and British financial firms should have been allowed to collapse in 2007 and good riddance! However, dumb politicians listened to the call of the Sirens and drove the ship of state on the rocks. Looks like the angry citizens are throwing the bailout fools overboard. 8)

[stealthswimmer]

All the people that voted for the bailout got put out of office? I dunno cus I haven't been following the elections.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer Banks can enslave in a marketplace that is what debt is and debt is perfectly acceptable in a market place.

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

Not really. Debt is voluntarily entered into with the terms of agreement known beforehand.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer just because I know doesn't mean it is voluntary, humans do what is neccessary and it has been found that humans are pretty bad at accessing risk. and all it takes for debt to be erased is a stroke of a pen. it is not physically real and can only exist through force.

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

"just because I know it doesn't mean it is voluntary" correct, there's also the matter of not having violence used against you to make you enter the "agreement" and indeed debt does not involve any violence to get you to enter it, so it's voluntary.

Your other argument is nonsense. Some people are also bad at assessing risk, yes...that does not mean that swimming is involuntary even though it involves risk.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer actually there was an experiment done where both humans and monkeys were given the option of a guy who would always take one grape away out of three or someone who may or may not take all of them away. Both the monkeys and the humans primarily went with the latter.

Also being endebted does involve coercion or force that is what happens when you don't pay you get kicked to the curb or it is siezed. the force is there it is just not readily apparent.

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

experiment - and in the real world most people are not given that option. A person giving you a loan does not have the option of forcing you to take the loan. As well, there's a more complicated example of the experiment you mentioned that is discussed here on Youtube with Steven Levitt.

Debt - the force is by the person who isn't repaying the loan since they're violating terms of agreement and in this case can be construed as theft.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer the experiment is a very good appropriation of risk in the real world "should I go for the garuntee or the risk"

Forcing no lying and coercing yes

how is that "force" what did that person do by being idle that would be constituted as "force" theft is in the eye of the beholder and the contract can only exist if both parties believe in it the contract itself does not enforce itself so basically if it is not enforced it is as if it never existed.

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

There are already laws against fraud, however even without such laws there could be ways of creating incentives to not engage in fraud - for example, boycotts and such and smearing a firm's reputation in a trade magazine.

The force came in taking the other person's stuff without permission(whether you consider it the "bank's money" or the money of another depositor at the bank).

As well, you don't need laws to enforce contracts either.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer problem with the first two: lying people do lie to get what they want and since there would be no official channel that people would trust most boycotts would be inneffective since there would be too many conflicting stories.

I'm where aware of the lack of need for laws I am saying that there is a need of the potential use of force. Basically I'm arguing that fear is neccessary in your system and the other edge of your argument is what the lack of fear would cause.

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

Wrong. There would likely be evidence put into trade magazines or people could look online to find reputable sources. Public smearing of reputation worked in the "Wild West" which turns out wasn't as wild as the movies make it out to be.

And no, fear is not necessary in the system I advocate (unless you mean scaring criminals so that they stop engaging in criminal activity).

Force? Sure - to be used against people who first initiate force or threaten to do so.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer I know about the "wild west" but it wasn't so peachy either. Public smearing works now but the problem with that technique is that it is too effective. You can easily ruin someones reputation with just a rumor whether it is true or not.

Property can only exist through the threat of using force.

I like how you said that fear is not neccessary except it is. ANYONE can be a criminal so it is based on fear. (which is natural)

[stealthswimmer]

@Garhunt05

Public smearing works "too well" now because people know there are laws against slander and such, so they assume that anything that's said is true. If they KNEW that anyone could say anything, they'd go to reputable sources to fact check.

OH and yea, property definitely exists because of force....but it doesn't have to be the *intiiation* of force because homesteading unowned resources doesn't use force against anyone else.

[Garhunt05]

@stealthswimmer that statement is contraditory because any could say anything so "repudible" vary greatly. Just look at the news today and the blogosphere anyone can say anything and even some of the most blatant falsehoods are sometimes read as truth.

in your society there would be no real confirmation of ownership outside of the direct parties. and the last great Homesteading occurred from government seized land.

[dons123111]

it's as good as any reason to enslave, I suppose...

[Amiduffer]

Typical glossing over of the British Empires doctrines of genocidal enslavement policies and calling it freedom.