The people on this board that scare me the most..

[Ben]

The Libertarian party is fine on social issues but quite callous and unrealistic when it comes to issues of social welfare. A true libertarian would argue that the civil rights act of 1964 is an abrogation of a proprietor's right to discriminate based on sex or race if he wants. That's what it means for the government not to involve itself in the way markets operate. A libertarian would say that labor laws are a violation of the sacred right to contract. They would say that EMTALA, which requires emergency rooms to treat people who are dying regardless of ability to pay, is a government handout and an interference with the rights of the hospital as a business.

The only advantage libertarians have on the Republicans is their policy of non-interference in truly private realms. But on many issues of civil rights and social welfare they are actually more archaic than the Republicans.


Noam Chomsky On American "Libertarianism"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a1rK4PsP0zY

[Odelay]

I've heard a definition of modern US libertarianism as Republicans who like to smoke pot. The only modification I would make on that is to chuck the party label and say Libertarians are Right Wingers who smoke pot. These people are extreme, i.e. right side of the political spectrum extreme. Screwing trannys and smoking pot are fine. But beyond that they pretty much get in lock step with the rest of the b.s. from the right.

Show me a US Libertarian who believes in an unfettered right to abortion, as any true libertarian would believe, and I'll show you a damn rare breed. These people are litttered with inconsistencies in their positions while trying to make us believe that they're libertarian - a philosophy that is so easy to be consistent there's only one rule, i.e. does this law infringe on my private liberty? Then I hate it.

Ron and Rand Paul can go suck it. They're about as fake as you can get.

[Silcc69]

I've heard a definition of modern US libertarianism as Republicans who like to smoke pot. The only modification I would make on that is to chuck the party label and say Libertarians are Right Wingers who smoke pot. These people are extreme, i.e. right side of the political spectrum extreme. Screwing trannys and smoking pot are fine. But beyond that they pretty much get in lock step with the rest of the b.s. from the right.

Show me a US Libertarian who believes in an unfettered right to abortion, as any true libertarian would believe, and I'll show you a damn rare breed. These people are litttered with inconsistencies in their positions while trying to make us believe that they're libertarian - a philosophy that is so easy to be consistent there's only one rule, i.e. does this law infringe on my private liberty? Then I hate it.

Ron and Rand Paul can go suck it. They're about as fake as you can get.

I think our very own Bella is.

[BellaBellucci]

I'm a libertarian, but not THAT kind of libertarian. I believe we should shrink the federal budget by focusing on America first by not policing or aiding the entire world) and believe that we should be controlling boardrooms, not bedrooms - which isn't to say I'm a corporatist, but pure capitalism isn't anarchy - the laws should provide a level playing field, not a mechanism for cronyism (I'm looking at you Bear Stearns, BOA, and Halliburton). The constitution protects individuals, and despite Citizens United, a corporation is NOT an individual. On a related note, our system of government is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Democracy is merely the method of selection of our leaders, and in some states, some limited lawmaking (Prop 8 here in CA was a fiasco and a referendum should never have the ability to amend or change a constitution). On abortion, I believe a woman has a right to one until the third trimester.

I came from the left, not the right, so I'm a MINarchist, not an ANarchist. Any questions?

~BB~

[Silcc69]

So you voted for Bob Barr right?

[Stavros]

I'm a libertarian, but not THAT kind of libertarian. I believe we should shrink the federal budget by focusing on America first by not policing or aiding the entire world) and believe that we should be controlling boardrooms, not bedrooms - which isn't to say I'm a corporatist, but pure capitalism isn't anarchy - the laws should provide a level playing field, not a mechanism for cronyism (I'm looking at you Bear Stearns, BOA, and Halliburton). The constitution protects individuals, and despite Citizens United, a corporation is NOT an individual. On a related note, our system of government is a constitutional republic, not a democracy. Democracy is merely the method of selection of our leaders, and in some states, some limited lawmaking (Prop 8 here in CA was a fiasco and a referendum should never have the ability to amend or change a constitution). On abortion, I believe a woman has a right to one until the third trimester.

I came from the left, not the right, so I'm a MINarchist, not an ANarchist. Any questions?

~BB~

If you are a MINarchist, then you don't need a Constitution which imposes laws and values on individuals who should be free to make up their own minds what the laws and values that shape human relations should be; because MINarchists believe there are only individuals, there is no such thing as society.

The difference between a Republic and a Democracy which James Madison proposed in 1787 was considered eccentric at the time and not accepted by everyone. Like many (most?) of the young Revolutionaries of the time, Madison believed in minimal government, and wanted power to reside in the people and only be filtered through government in extreme cases, such as 'national' defence, which meant defence of the individual state in the Union, or the 'United' states when threatened from outside, eg the British Empire. At the same time, where local, state and federal officials existed they were expected to be democratically elected. Many libertarians believe the 'crisis management' of President Lincoln during the Civil War ended the original Revolutionary project and set the USA on to a course of 'Big (and intrusive) Government'.

So the USA is a Republic with a democratically elected government; by contrast, the United Kingdom is a Monarchy with a democratically elected government. Under the Constitution of the USA, and under the Parliamentary system of government in the UK, it would not be impossible for one political party to form the government or dominate the Presidency/Parliament/Congress for 100 years if the people vote that way.

The MINarchist idea that politics and economics ought to be an individual not a collective decision making process is perfectly respectable, but as yet neither individuals, or societies, or indeed, 'societies' have yet to work out how to function without some form of government, and as long as the most effective means of creating government is through democratic elections and accountability, you have to live in a Union that is Republican and which operates democratically. The alleged difference is sophistry, and nothing more than that.

[BellaBellucci]

So you voted for Bob Barr right?

Indeed I did. And yes, I'm aware that he's a jackass sometimes, as is Ron Paul. However, I live in California, so my vote didn't really count anyway. :lol: #bluestate #votingluxury

~BB~

[BellaBellucci]

which isn't to say I'm a corporatist

Err... correction: which isn't to say I'm not a capitalist. However, I DO happen to be anti-corporatist, too. I believe our current system is simply a rebranding of the feudal system.

~BB~

[trish]

Here’s a game I invented called Accumulation. It’s a game of pure chance; no strategy. There are ten players, one hundred coins and a spinning wheel like on the Wheel of Fortune. The wheel is divided into one hundred equal sectors.

At the beginning of the game the hundred sectors are evenly divided into ten colors (one color for each player). So the first ten sectors bare player one’s color. The next ten bare player two’s color, etc.
For each coin the wheel is spun to see which player gets possession of that coin. So by the time the wheel is spun one hundred times the coins have been distributed randomly among the players.

Each player is expected to wind up with ten coins. But of course there will be fluctuations. Player one might actually acquire twelve coins, player two may get nine coins, player three might get eleven etc.

Now the sectors of the wheel are recolored according to the current distribution of coins. If player one currently has twelve coins, then the first twelves sectors of the wheel are given player one’s color. If player two only has nine coins, then the next nine sectors are given his color. Etc.

Now collect the coins and with the new painted wheel repeat the process. This time player one is expected to acquire twelve coins. Player two to acquire nine. Etc.

Repeat until the distribution stabilizes.

Of course the question is: will the game stabilize, and if so what does the stable distribution look like?

A moment’s thought reveals the answer. From the very start of the game there is a positive probability that one of the players will eventually acquire all of the coins. So indeed, eventually one player will acquire all the coins, and once that happens there is not way he will ever lose them. There are ten stable equilibrium points for the game, and the game will seek out one of them and stay there.

This game is a toy model (i.e. a metaphor) of an economy. Each shuffle of the coins represents the distribution of wealth among the population after a one period of buying, selling and exchanging products, goods and wares. The model demonstrates the tendency of wealth to clump and accumulate, ultimately into one large lump.

All substantive claims are based on substantive assumptions. One of the primary assumptions of this toy model is money and power have a kind of inertia, so that one’s expected worth after the next cycle is equal to one’s current worth. It is a simple, believable, almost apodictic assumption. This is somewhat akin to but not quite as strong as the assumption that money and power attract more money and more power. What is interesting is that, within the context of the toy model, the weaker assumption seems to entail the stronger as a conclusion. Like a distribution of mass in the vacuum of space, that gravitates, clumps and accretes into planets, stars and black holes. This is not unlike the primary assumption of the trickle down theory, with the exception that the Reagan version has down confused with up and up confused with down. The wealthier individuals, families and corporations are the heavier bodies that pull down the rain of matter from the lighter gasses that orbit above.

It might be objected that the toy model above makes another assumption, one that is unwarranted, namely that the economies being modeled have limited resources; i.e. they don’t grow...there are only one hundred coins...ever.

Of course one can slowly add coins to the game. Say every twenty cycles of the game one throws in an extra coin. It is easy to see this will not drastically effect the limiting outcome. It is still very likely that one player will eventually acquire all the wealth. The addition of an extra coin every so often does open up the possibility a player who was out of the game might find himself back in. But the odds of him being able to stay in the game for any length of time are next to nil. The model is a decent description of a slow growth economy, which is what we have most of the time.

Economies do sometimes display explosive bursts of growth. But these have their own mechanisms that favor the aggregation and accumulation of wealth around a small number of individuals, families and corporations.

I suspect this type of analysis can be generalized to show that under reasonable assumptions almost any economy increases it entropy through the process of clumping and aggregation.

This would apply to regulated economies as well a totally free-market economies, unless the regulators and legislatures are insulated against the influence of accumulated money and power (which is difficult to do). Laws that broke up huge inheritances and monopolies, with time, will be rewritten to render them ineffective. As I see them regulations, if not properly maintained, are simply buffers that we place in the system to slow its evolution into a lopsided oligarchy. The aim of economic libertarianism seems to be to destroy those buffers and deliver the wealth to those who “deserve” it as quickly as possible.

[Silcc69]

Is it me or does anybody else notice how the web is dominated by conservatives. I go on yahoo and conservatives are dominating the comments section. I go to Huffpro and agan a good chunk go there. I went to Breibart the other day out of curiosity and there were taking shots at Fox Sports 1 saying it was to liberal (LMFAO WTFH!!!) And whenever I am on twitter they dominate that with #obamacare and #defundobamacare and other hashtags. Actually it seems like they whine all the time on twitter.

[DirtyDon]

They give real Republicans a bad name. I suspect a Liberal conspiracy.

[Ben in LA]

Is it me or does anybody else notice how the web is dominated by conservatives. I go on yahoo and conservatives are dominating the comments section. I go to Huffpro and agan a good chunk go there. I went to Breibart the other day out of curiosity and there were taking shots at Fox Sports 1 saying it was to liberal (LMFAO WTFH!!!) And whenever I am on twitter they dominate that with #obamacare and #defundobamacare and other hashtags. Actually it seems like they whine all the time on twitter.

I hate seeing that shit on my timeline, that and the birther crap. I unfollow folks who do that. Yes folks can tweet and retweet what they want, but I don't HAVE to see it or like it.

Case in point, comments on pics of MLK earlier today. SMDH...

[Prospero]

silcc69... proving that the Web is the last refuge of scoundrels?