What a tenuous link. What is the economic transaction of getting gay married? What is the civil argument for me selling cars that start on fire and kill all the passengers?
A "free" market is as terrifying as a world with no laws whatsoever. Personally, I like not being assaulted or constantly fearing that my food is poison- by all means regulate and legislate to take care of those things.
it is fun reading how absurd some of the stuff these "Money is evil" types say. Like calling money evil is saying a screwdriver is evil. Money is a tool people invented. A Medium of Exchange, instead of trying to figure out how many shirts are worth a hamburger. You use money, its similar to how English is used as a medium for the U.N. instead of each country needing hundreds of translators, they need one. Its just an efficient way to trade with one another.
It's your fair share because Land is not the product of labor but the product of "God" if you wish, so instead of having some stupid dictator redistribute the land, and instead of having a bunch of mini-serfs controlling production, we redistribute the land based on it's value but in dollars.
@imsolive89 Well, the USA is called a free country, but that is a common misconception, it is the freest country in that you are allowed to think whatever you want without being punished for it and you are allowed to say many things (many, not all) that you think. A slightly more limited part is you are allowed to act on most of what you say (provided the laws of physics allow it.)
This argument is a pretty egregious oversimplification. The examples are totally absurd. Restricting people's ability to be a lawyer, say, because of prior criminal activity is totally different from restricting it by hair color. Banning mercury-laden seafood from the market is oppression I can live with.
@Magicwillnz Let the criminals practice law. Let other firms maintain databases of the history of lawyers including credit, criminal, and courtroom statistics. Then let the consumer decide who he wants to hire.
Personally I'd rather hire the services of someone who will get me the best result regardless of education, test results, or personal history.
I was more pointing out the video's strawman argument than actually advocating we ban criminals from becoming lawyers. The "brown hair" example was obviously designed to illustrate a point, but it ignores the fact that most regulations are more sensible than that.
The basic premise of this video is fundamentally flawed. Libertarians always rail against the government for supposedly curtaining "liberty" through economics, but then seem oblivious to the fact that individuals and corportations can abuse economics just as badly. It's really amazing how they are so paranoid about the gov and so naive about big business. Libertarians are really just communists who have replaced "big government" with "big business." Real liberty means balancing between both.
@Ranillon These multi-national corporations, or even the corporation as we know it today, could not exist without a government having first chartered it. "Big Business" is then further protected by Government via laws and regulations which increase the cost of doing business, placing disproportionate pressure on smaller firms and ultimately serving as "barriers to entry" for new firms.
@KillerWhaleSFI Capitalism is still very much a valid system in this day and age. It provides motivation for companies, people, etc. to push forward and continue to produce better things and increase the overall living conditions of people everywhere. Color TVs, just to name an example, were brought to realization because of the capitalistic system. What you described at one point, the capitalists on the island, is an unrealizable utopia which will never exist.
Classical Libertarianism, or anarcho-communism, is the only proper libertarianism.
This shitty minarchist Randroid rot calling itself "libertarian" is a insult to the memory of Joseph Déjacque.
Also if the main principle of libertarianism, even false right-"libertarianism", is "Everyone should do what they want as long as it does not harm others" they should be fervently anti-capitalist as capitalism has proven itself to be extremely harmful to everyone except the people on top.
One big problem with this video, it suggests that any regulation of the economy is a massive attack against liberty. The problem is, right now Assassins are illegal. Would it improve the country to legalize murder?
@helios5868 Not at all, the libertarian viewpoint is that protecting property is one of the founding principles of a free society, you own your body therefore you have the right to protect it, either yourself or through hired agents. You don't "regulate" hired murderers you criminalize them. Government isn't trying to criminalize the economy they are attempting to manipulate it. If it should be allowed then it shouldn't be regulated.
Well said. The single greatest philosophical difference between the american left and right is their taste in animal mascots. Both believe in inforcing morality, both believe in protecting people from their own choices, both believe in manipulating commerce one way or the other. The only political thoery that does not do this, short of anarchy, is libertarianism.
@Felhaven While I partially agree with what you are saying, you have placed too high an honor on libertarianism. The Progressive movement, the real left-wingers, have no interest in legislating morality. You've confused a social safety net with protecting people from their own choices, it is actually more like protecting people from OTHER people's choices.
@helios5868 the main justification used for the safety net, and for the higher texes on the rich to pay for it, is a moral imperitive. As for protecting people from their choices, I am mainly refering to sin-taxes and legislation to restrict the sale of certain fats.
I'm curious how this applies to publishing material that is considered dangerous or obscene. It seems like this is an "all or nothing" view. What about a snuff film or any other subject that's considered "wrong"?
@Hashishin13 If they're talking about being truly free to publish WHATEVER they want wouldn't that include subjects that are controversial/illegal? For example, it's illegal to publish how to make a cell phone jammer. It's also illegal to use a cell phone jammer, but a book or movie about making a cell phone jammer is just that.
@JamesHaskin Well it depends on what you think is a crime, I think cell phone jammers should be legal, so should the books. If you live in a community that wants to ban them and you agree to their rules then they would be illegal, if you don't agree or they don't think they should be illegal then it wouldn't be a crime.
@Hashishin13 I'm not asking what you think. I've been trying to pose a hypothetical situation pertaining to this video but you keep stating the obvious. You really have no idea what this video is talking about do you?
i may be a conservative but i believe in civil liberties; i'd rather smoke a joint and not get arrested than to produce or trade goods with freedom...
how about my freedom to not participate? to just live without selling my labor so I can pay into the cyclical consumption machine that is the global economy?
oh, thats not an option? I guess all this talk of freedom is moot.
Apparently YOU treat the homeless like crap. That's the problem with people like YOU is YOU pass the buck and blame "society" so YOU don't have to do anything.
If you think your forebears were mistaken in establishing a division of labour, homesteading land and creating and accumulating capital, then you are free to separate from it. You will have that life which obtains in the absence of voluntary exchange with your betters - the life of Robinson Crusoe, left completely autonomous on his island, with no greedy tool-makers or tool-inheritors to deprive him of anything, and no callous bosses to exploit him.
@PanzerDivisionBOM that'd be great... but I have an even better idea, put all the capitalists on the island and they can play monopoly with each other and PROFIT, while the rest of the world does something of actual significance (exploring space, feed/clothe/house/educate every person on the planet, use our technology to create material abundance for all, develop clean energy, stop destroying the planet, etc..)
@KillerWhaleSFl In your senario.....who would create and develop all of this clean energy and technology and material abudnance for all???? If all of the Capitalists (people who produce) were not part of your society, but your society was full of the people who need you to: feed, clothe, house, and educate every person on the planet how do you intend to pay for this?
@HarrisonCountyStudio believe it or not, there are some people who do things absent a profit motive.if you gave people the CHOICE to work for their own, their families, and their communities benefit in a healthy society , as opposed to putting a price tag on everything and DEMANDING it. I think you would be surprised at the response.
Capitalism was necessary in the past, absolutely, there was ACTUAL (vs. manufactured) scarcity in the world. its time we move past this archaic paradigm
@KillerWhaleSFl If you don't know the importance that the price mechanism has when comparing factors of production and signaling information about supply and demand to producers and consumers and if you think that scarcity doesn't exist anymore and what we think of as scarcity if "manufactured" by evil monopolists, you clearly have never read anything AT ALL about economics.
And no one "demands" profits. You and your friends can form and live on a commune if you want, in a Libertarian society.
@KillerWhaleSFl Exploring space, giving quality consumer goods to everyone, technological advancement and taking care of the environment and resources are things we all like, but what allows us to get these things is the market economy.
Every time a Planned economy tried to do any of those, the absence of a price mechanism to coordinate production caused economic collapse and famine, whilst a subsequent the centralization of the political power caused dictatorship and authoritarianism.
Which is to say, you want access to the benefits of society - the tools and land that people have developed and cared for in the past - and you don't want to have to give anything in return.
Your mockery reveals perhaps the greatest failure of your philosophy. The failure to comprehend that, the worst that any greedy tool-ineritor can sentence you to for failure to cooperate with him, is to you exactly the same set of conditions as if his tools had never been made at all.
@KillerWhaleSFl So in your mind, it's okay to forcefully take other people's money and resources so you don't have to work?
If you are too lazy or uninterested to work, that's acceptable, but to try to use it as a reason to steal from others means you're an idiot. Grow up and stop expecting things for free. Doing nothing and expecting everything is not the freedom to not participate, that's being a selfish shithead. Go live off the land if that's what you want.
@KillerWhaleSFl So in your mind, it's okay to forcefully take other people's money and resources so you don't have to work?
If you are too lazy or uninterested to work, that's acceptable, but to try to use it as a reason to steal from others means you're an idiot. Grow up and stop expecting things for free. Doing nothing and expecting everything is not the freedom to not participate, that's being a selfish shithead. Go live off the land if that's what you want.
@KillerWhaleSFl its an option! my suggestion for you would be to move to africa or some place similar. join a tribe where you can live by the sweat of your brow. of course you will be at the bottom of the pecking order there too and have to do what ever the tribal leader tells you. learn basket weaving before you go so you have at least something to contribute to the tribe. hard to find someone to teach you hunting/gathering. so stop using capitalist society, you have lots to learn, get on it!
@KillerWhaleSFl not participating in society is a hell of a lot more unpleasant than some subscribers think. also, if you have beefs with a "global economic consumption machine", simply buy less crap. look into real estate or smthg.
@KillerWhaleSFl not participating in society is a hell of a lot more unpleasant than some subscribers think. also, if you have beefs with a "global economic consumption machine", simply buy less crap. look into real estate or smthg.
@KillerWhaleSFl You totally have the freedom to do such a thing, completely drop out of the capitalist society. Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unibomber, did just that, to take an extreme and famous case, as well as many others who have gone undocumented for obvious reasons. If you have not chosen to do this because, you know, you like the internet and youtube and whatnot, that is not because you don't have the freedom to, its because you like all of the products of capitalism.
You should look into some form of Left-Libertarianism. Geoanarchism would give you just what you want while allowing everyone else to work a lot less in a capitalist society.
If we were to have all the land users pay a rent to all of society and then redistribute that amongst the people equally (known as the Citizen's Dividend), you would be able to use that money to pay for a piece of land equal in value. Since land values are much different based on it's resources and proximity to population, you would be able to get a couple feet in Los Angeles or a couple acres in Montana.
What a tenuous link. What is the economic transaction of getting gay married? What is the civil argument for me selling cars that start on fire and kill all the passengers?
A "free" market is as terrifying as a world with no laws whatsoever. Personally, I like not being assaulted or constantly fearing that my food is poison- by all means regulate and legislate to take care of those things.
donfolstar 3 weeks ago
it is fun reading how absurd some of the stuff these "Money is evil" types say. Like calling money evil is saying a screwdriver is evil. Money is a tool people invented. A Medium of Exchange, instead of trying to figure out how many shirts are worth a hamburger. You use money, its similar to how English is used as a medium for the U.N. instead of each country needing hundreds of translators, they need one. Its just an efficient way to trade with one another.
Mezey5 1 month ago
lol 35 responses from the free market capitalists and not one addresses the issue at hand. I think I struck a nerve
KillerWhaleSFl 3 months ago
my god i don't understand how the posting work on this. I'm new!!!!
ihatemoses 3 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
It's your fair share because Land is not the product of labor but the product of "God" if you wish, so instead of having some stupid dictator redistribute the land, and instead of having a bunch of mini-serfs controlling production, we redistribute the land based on it's value but in dollars.
ihatemoses 3 months ago
Ok so... there is no difference between me marrying a goat and having a true monopoly . both are equal liberties i have the power to do?
imsolive89 5 months ago
@imsolive89 Well, the USA is called a free country, but that is a common misconception, it is the freest country in that you are allowed to think whatever you want without being punished for it and you are allowed to say many things (many, not all) that you think. A slightly more limited part is you are allowed to act on most of what you say (provided the laws of physics allow it.)
Jhraxlin 3 months ago
@imsolive89 If the goat freely gives consent to marrying you, tell me where you're registered, and I'll get you a gift.
Ypsiroselee 3 months ago
@Ypsiroselee who cares about the goat , talk about how having a monopoly and marriage are the same thing according to this guy
imsolive89 3 months ago
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qwerty94376 5 months ago
The American Bar Association is just ANOTHER gov't mandated monopoly.
yakyakyak69 5 months ago
This argument is a pretty egregious oversimplification. The examples are totally absurd. Restricting people's ability to be a lawyer, say, because of prior criminal activity is totally different from restricting it by hair color. Banning mercury-laden seafood from the market is oppression I can live with.
Magicwillnz 5 months ago
@Magicwillnz Let the criminals practice law. Let other firms maintain databases of the history of lawyers including credit, criminal, and courtroom statistics. Then let the consumer decide who he wants to hire.
Personally I'd rather hire the services of someone who will get me the best result regardless of education, test results, or personal history.
HaroldRehling 5 months ago
@HaroldRehling
I was more pointing out the video's strawman argument than actually advocating we ban criminals from becoming lawyers. The "brown hair" example was obviously designed to illustrate a point, but it ignores the fact that most regulations are more sensible than that.
Magicwillnz 5 months ago
The basic premise of this video is fundamentally flawed. Libertarians always rail against the government for supposedly curtaining "liberty" through economics, but then seem oblivious to the fact that individuals and corportations can abuse economics just as badly. It's really amazing how they are so paranoid about the gov and so naive about big business. Libertarians are really just communists who have replaced "big government" with "big business." Real liberty means balancing between both.
Ranillon 5 months ago
@Ranillon These multi-national corporations, or even the corporation as we know it today, could not exist without a government having first chartered it. "Big Business" is then further protected by Government via laws and regulations which increase the cost of doing business, placing disproportionate pressure on smaller firms and ultimately serving as "barriers to entry" for new firms.
It all begins and ends with The State.
HaroldRehling 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFI Capitalism is still very much a valid system in this day and age. It provides motivation for companies, people, etc. to push forward and continue to produce better things and increase the overall living conditions of people everywhere. Color TVs, just to name an example, were brought to realization because of the capitalistic system. What you described at one point, the capitalists on the island, is an unrealizable utopia which will never exist.
kopackjm 5 months ago
Classical Libertarianism, or anarcho-communism, is the only proper libertarianism.
This shitty minarchist Randroid rot calling itself "libertarian" is a insult to the memory of Joseph Déjacque.
Also if the main principle of libertarianism, even false right-"libertarianism", is "Everyone should do what they want as long as it does not harm others" they should be fervently anti-capitalist as capitalism has proven itself to be extremely harmful to everyone except the people on top.
WhimsicalQuandary 5 months ago
One big problem with this video, it suggests that any regulation of the economy is a massive attack against liberty. The problem is, right now Assassins are illegal. Would it improve the country to legalize murder?
helios5868 5 months ago
@helios5868 Not at all, the libertarian viewpoint is that protecting property is one of the founding principles of a free society, you own your body therefore you have the right to protect it, either yourself or through hired agents. You don't "regulate" hired murderers you criminalize them. Government isn't trying to criminalize the economy they are attempting to manipulate it. If it should be allowed then it shouldn't be regulated.
Hashishin13 5 months ago
Well said. The single greatest philosophical difference between the american left and right is their taste in animal mascots. Both believe in inforcing morality, both believe in protecting people from their own choices, both believe in manipulating commerce one way or the other. The only political thoery that does not do this, short of anarchy, is libertarianism.
Felhaven 5 months ago
@Felhaven While I partially agree with what you are saying, you have placed too high an honor on libertarianism. The Progressive movement, the real left-wingers, have no interest in legislating morality. You've confused a social safety net with protecting people from their own choices, it is actually more like protecting people from OTHER people's choices.
helios5868 5 months ago
@helios5868 the main justification used for the safety net, and for the higher texes on the rich to pay for it, is a moral imperitive. As for protecting people from their choices, I am mainly refering to sin-taxes and legislation to restrict the sale of certain fats.
Felhaven 5 months ago
@helios5868 Not at all, its the progressives that are attempting to ban smoking in bars, tax ciggarrettes etc.
Hashishin13 5 months ago
Economic freedom leaves to personal freedom. The freeer the market the freeer the people.
JaysGOP 5 months ago
I'm curious how this applies to publishing material that is considered dangerous or obscene. It seems like this is an "all or nothing" view. What about a snuff film or any other subject that's considered "wrong"?
JamesHaskin 5 months ago
@JamesHaskin The same as hired murderers? Its a crime to be deat with by a court system.
Hashishin13 5 months ago
@Hashishin13 If they're talking about being truly free to publish WHATEVER they want wouldn't that include subjects that are controversial/illegal? For example, it's illegal to publish how to make a cell phone jammer. It's also illegal to use a cell phone jammer, but a book or movie about making a cell phone jammer is just that.
JamesHaskin 5 months ago
@JamesHaskin Well it depends on what you think is a crime, I think cell phone jammers should be legal, so should the books. If you live in a community that wants to ban them and you agree to their rules then they would be illegal, if you don't agree or they don't think they should be illegal then it wouldn't be a crime.
Hashishin13 5 months ago
@Hashishin13 I'm not asking what you think. I've been trying to pose a hypothetical situation pertaining to this video but you keep stating the obvious. You really have no idea what this video is talking about do you?
JamesHaskin 5 months ago
This is why libertarianism doesn't contradict itself.
TravistheHuman 5 months ago
i may be a conservative but i believe in civil liberties; i'd rather smoke a joint and not get arrested than to produce or trade goods with freedom...
WhatAxBrit 5 months ago 2
Well said!
libertarian500 5 months ago
Super argument!
Illyrien 5 months ago
how about my freedom to not participate? to just live without selling my labor so I can pay into the cyclical consumption machine that is the global economy?
oh, thats not an option? I guess all this talk of freedom is moot.
KillerWhaleSFl 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
You can do that, but you can't expect anything from society if you're not giving anything back.
doctorlieberman 5 months ago 9
@doctorlieberman oh, I would expect a lot from society, and all of it negative. Have you seen how we treat the homeless?
I have absolutely no objection to contributing to a system that actually worked, but the monetary market system is not it.
KillerWhaleSFl 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl "Have you seen how WE treat the homeless?"
Apparently YOU treat the homeless like crap. That's the problem with people like YOU is YOU pass the buck and blame "society" so YOU don't have to do anything.
justintempler 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
Actually, you can.
If you think your forebears were mistaken in establishing a division of labour, homesteading land and creating and accumulating capital, then you are free to separate from it. You will have that life which obtains in the absence of voluntary exchange with your betters - the life of Robinson Crusoe, left completely autonomous on his island, with no greedy tool-makers or tool-inheritors to deprive him of anything, and no callous bosses to exploit him.
PanzerDivisionBOM 5 months ago 11
@PanzerDivisionBOM that'd be great... but I have an even better idea, put all the capitalists on the island and they can play monopoly with each other and PROFIT, while the rest of the world does something of actual significance (exploring space, feed/clothe/house/educate every person on the planet, use our technology to create material abundance for all, develop clean energy, stop destroying the planet, etc..)
you made me laugh with the "voluntary" part
KillerWhaleSFl 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl Your reply is wrong in so many ways, I am not even going to try to correct you. *cough* Virgin Galactic *cough*
DynamicUnreality 5 months ago
@DynamicUnreality Also SpaceX ;)
ShawnX3 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl In your senario.....who would create and develop all of this clean energy and technology and material abudnance for all???? If all of the Capitalists (people who produce) were not part of your society, but your society was full of the people who need you to: feed, clothe, house, and educate every person on the planet how do you intend to pay for this?
HarrisonCountyStudio 5 months ago
@HarrisonCountyStudio believe it or not, there are some people who do things absent a profit motive.if you gave people the CHOICE to work for their own, their families, and their communities benefit in a healthy society , as opposed to putting a price tag on everything and DEMANDING it. I think you would be surprised at the response.
Capitalism was necessary in the past, absolutely, there was ACTUAL (vs. manufactured) scarcity in the world. its time we move past this archaic paradigm
KillerWhaleSFl 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl If you don't know the importance that the price mechanism has when comparing factors of production and signaling information about supply and demand to producers and consumers and if you think that scarcity doesn't exist anymore and what we think of as scarcity if "manufactured" by evil monopolists, you clearly have never read anything AT ALL about economics.
And no one "demands" profits. You and your friends can form and live on a commune if you want, in a Libertarian society.
Chaos511 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl Exploring space, giving quality consumer goods to everyone, technological advancement and taking care of the environment and resources are things we all like, but what allows us to get these things is the market economy.
Every time a Planned economy tried to do any of those, the absence of a price mechanism to coordinate production caused economic collapse and famine, whilst a subsequent the centralization of the political power caused dictatorship and authoritarianism.
Chaos511 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
Which is to say, you want access to the benefits of society - the tools and land that people have developed and cared for in the past - and you don't want to have to give anything in return.
Your mockery reveals perhaps the greatest failure of your philosophy. The failure to comprehend that, the worst that any greedy tool-ineritor can sentence you to for failure to cooperate with him, is to you exactly the same set of conditions as if his tools had never been made at all.
PanzerDivisionBOM 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl So in your mind, it's okay to forcefully take other people's money and resources so you don't have to work?
If you are too lazy or uninterested to work, that's acceptable, but to try to use it as a reason to steal from others means you're an idiot. Grow up and stop expecting things for free. Doing nothing and expecting everything is not the freedom to not participate, that's being a selfish shithead. Go live off the land if that's what you want.
Jotto999 5 months ago
This has been flagged as spam show
@KillerWhaleSFl So in your mind, it's okay to forcefully take other people's money and resources so you don't have to work?
If you are too lazy or uninterested to work, that's acceptable, but to try to use it as a reason to steal from others means you're an idiot. Grow up and stop expecting things for free. Doing nothing and expecting everything is not the freedom to not participate, that's being a selfish shithead. Go live off the land if that's what you want.
Jotto999 5 months ago 2
@KillerWhaleSFl its an option! my suggestion for you would be to move to africa or some place similar. join a tribe where you can live by the sweat of your brow. of course you will be at the bottom of the pecking order there too and have to do what ever the tribal leader tells you. learn basket weaving before you go so you have at least something to contribute to the tribe. hard to find someone to teach you hunting/gathering. so stop using capitalist society, you have lots to learn, get on it!
sw8741 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl not participating in society is a hell of a lot more unpleasant than some subscribers think. also, if you have beefs with a "global economic consumption machine", simply buy less crap. look into real estate or smthg.
fifh89 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl not participating in society is a hell of a lot more unpleasant than some subscribers think. also, if you have beefs with a "global economic consumption machine", simply buy less crap. look into real estate or smthg.
fifh89 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl You totally have the freedom to do such a thing, completely drop out of the capitalist society. Ted Kaczynski, aka the Unibomber, did just that, to take an extreme and famous case, as well as many others who have gone undocumented for obvious reasons. If you have not chosen to do this because, you know, you like the internet and youtube and whatnot, that is not because you don't have the freedom to, its because you like all of the products of capitalism.
DynamicUnreality 5 months ago
@DynamicUnreality *edit* sorry, not necessarily *all* of the products of capitalism, just the ones you refuse to give up.
DynamicUnreality 5 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
You should look into some form of Left-Libertarianism. Geoanarchism would give you just what you want while allowing everyone else to work a lot less in a capitalist society.
ihatemoses 3 months ago
@KillerWhaleSFl
If we were to have all the land users pay a rent to all of society and then redistribute that amongst the people equally (known as the Citizen's Dividend), you would be able to use that money to pay for a piece of land equal in value. Since land values are much different based on it's resources and proximity to population, you would be able to get a couple feet in Los Angeles or a couple acres in Montana.
ihatemoses 3 months ago
Great stuff!!!
RexT99 5 months ago