Democracy

[an8150]

"If you exercised some self control and rebutted honest points of view instead of straw men, we might see your gravamen."

I rather doubt it.

[an8150]

No I wasn't aware of your in-house anarcho-capitalist, Stavros. I shall certainly read her (?) work, as you suggest.

I assume you were trying to bait her out of her quietitude on this thread.

If she is as you've characterised her, I'd say she is in that sense unusual for a libertarian.

[an8150]

Well, I agree that you can't buck the market (as the Thatcherites used to say), Odelay, but I don't think that's quite what you and I are describing, although I think you have identified the key point about quality/quantity, and you're right, my example is counterfactual, necessarily so. Did the literary world suffer from an absence of Salinger? There I think you perform sleight of-hand: is the provision of fine alternatives a replacement for the particular talent (assuming Salinger would've gone on to write other worthwhile novels...there's a good episode of Frasier dealing with just this sort of theme)? and did the fine alternatives emerge because of the absence of Salinger? it's not the same as the provision and distribution of petrol to motorists, nor even the replacement of petrol with fuel cells, which is kind of why I shied away from posing my examples with characters such as Steve Jobs or Elon Musk (yes, I'm aware neither has anything to do with petrol (gasoline), not sure about fuel cells, but I'm sure you take my point), and chose more extreme examples of transcendental genius. And that's pretty much Rand's approach, as you and many others have pointed out: she takes extreme cases and uses them to make a point.

In short, this is indeed all counterfactual, and we can't know until it happens, but my guess, which is all it is, is that a world of the permanently mediocre will not be as well provided for, and will not progress as far, as fast as a world of the mediocre and the talented/driven.

Set against that, it may be that in a world where the talented and driven have Gone Galt, the feckless and mediocre find themselves obliged to try harder, to achieve more...which may be part of your point. Whether they can or not, is part of Rand's.

[an8150]

Odelay, "As for coercion, I'm guessing that living as a peasant in the feudalistic middle ages felt pretty coercive, or just below the mercantile class during the Renaissance, or as a debtor in merry olde england of the 1800's. I'm a liberal, so I don't usually buy into the whole American exceptionalism rah rah bullshit. But I will say I'm grateful to live in America today, even under this awful oppressive Obama regime. "

Your average mediaeval monarch didn't have a fraction of the power and reach of a modern government, in terms of micro-management. Whilst it was certainly true that if you ended up on the wrong side of a mediaeval monarch you might well find yourself on the receiving end of a red hot poker (yes indeed), or being torn in two tied to two maddening horses, the reality for most people was that they led miserable lives untouched by government except perhaps in the crucial sense that their destinies were determined by status (not contract), and this was basically determined by the government. But if the modern era is (was) defined by a movement from status to contract, we are now moving in the opposite direction once more, with the government determining our due in life with reference to our deemed memberships of certain identity or client groups.

It's difficult to be sure, but by some measures, the tax take of mediaeval monarchs was a tiny, tiny percentage of the modern social democratic state's.

[Stavros]

No I wasn't aware of your in-house anarcho-capitalist, Stavros. I shall certainly read her (?) work, as you suggest.

I assume you were trying to bait her out of her quietitude on this thread.

If she is as you've characterised her, I'd say she is in that sense unusual for a libertarian.

I have no intention of baiting anyone, it was a simple piece of information, and I will let you split hairs on the meaning of libertarian, anarchist, anarcho-capitalist, etc as much as you like.

[Stavros]

Your average mediaeval monarch didn't have a fraction of the power and reach of a modern government, in terms of micro-management. Whilst it was certainly true that if you ended up on the wrong side of a mediaeval monarch you might well find yourself on the receiving end of a red hot poker (yes indeed), or being torn in two tied to two maddening horses, the reality for most people was that they led miserable lives untouched by government except perhaps in the crucial sense that their destinies were determined by status (not contract), and this was basically determined by the government. But if the modern era is (was) defined by a movement from status to contract, we are now moving in the opposite direction once more, with the government determining our due in life with reference to our deemed memberships of certain identity or client groups.

It's difficult to be sure, but by some measures, the tax take of mediaeval monarchs was a tiny, tiny percentage of the modern social democratic state's.

Having told us in an earlier post of your disdain for history it seems odd that you should rely on it to make this claim. It is, quite simply, rubbish as the varying tax rate on farmers when most people worked on the land could rise as high as 25% and in any case, though I don't suppose you have heard of Wat Tyler, or Jack Straw (no, not him), there was a 'Peasant's Revolt' in medieval England in 1381 at a time when people in England were serfs, as in, 'not free'. You may or may not have heard of the 'Poll Tax' (no, not Maggie's). Serfdom was not abolished until 1550, not long before the birth of William Shakespeare, a poet and playwright (b1564). You might also want to find out what a market town was and why it was an innovation in the development of capitalism. And the the British government does not micro-manage my life.
Peasants' Revolt - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[an8150]

Of course the British government micro-manages your life, Stavros. It, on behalf of the European Union, tells you which light bulbs you may use. That same government takes varying degrees of interest in what you ingest, and will not allow you to arm yourself against potential threats, unless they are so immediate that the chances of you having a weapon to hand are as near to zero as makes no difference. You may not be aware of it, but regulation governs most things most people do most of the time, from the composition of the oven gloves used to remove food from the oven to precise location and type of boiler used to heat your home.

Nothing I've said on this thread implies a disdain for history. I assume in making that claim you're referring to my dismissal of your inside history of the PLO, Fatah and so forth. But my impression is you're smart enough to appreciate that I took issue not with the history but with your assertion that that history justified your claim that murder was a "political act". You can do better.

[an8150]

Oh, and the British government's current tax take is about double what it was in Wat Tyler's time, if we take your figure of 25% to be correct.

[trish]

"If you exercised some self control and rebutted honest points of view instead of straw men, we might see your gravamen."

I rather doubt it.

Admitting then to the straw man style of argument, I see.

Does this post display the gravamen of your perspective?

...I give you (depending on whom you believe) either Tytler or de Tocqueville:

"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the public treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by a dictatorship."

You want to argue against government and democracy in particular and you support your view with complaints about taxes and a quote, probably by neither Tytler nor de Tocqueville. Tytler and de Tocqueville? Wake up, it’s the twenty first century. In a few short pages you are reduced to making an argument by authority and you can’t even name the authority. But hey, I believe you. You don’t like to pay your taxes. You really really don’t like to pay them. The only reason you do (if you do) is because of the threat of penalty. Okay, you’re coerced. The rest of us, not so much.

[Stavros]

Of course the British government micro-manages your life, Stavros. It, on behalf of the European Union, tells you which light bulbs you may use. That same government takes varying degrees of interest in what you ingest, and will not allow you to arm yourself against potential threats, unless they are so immediate that the chances of you having a weapon to hand are as near to zero as makes no difference. You may not be aware of it, but regulation governs most things most people do most of the time, from the composition of the oven gloves used to remove food from the oven to precise location and type of boiler used to heat your home.

Nothing I've said on this thread implies a disdain for history. I assume in making that claim you're referring to my dismissal of your inside history of the PLO, Fatah and so forth. But my impression is you're smart enough to appreciate that I took issue not with the history but with your assertion that that history justified your claim that murder was a "political act". You can do better.

There is a difference betwee micro-managing an individual's life, and responding to accidents and diseases by introducing regulations which, for example, do not allow shops or restaurants to sell food to customers that has not been kept in hygienic conditions; in such cases the legislation that covers it is designed to remove threats to health, and if you think that is being over-protective then you can always campaign to reverse the law just as you can (and maybe do) campaign against the UK's continuing membership of the European Union. Even in today's paper there is an article about the illness caused in one of Raymond Blanc's restaurants where the issue is one of culinary standards versus health as the report states:
Blanc Brasseries will now pay £3,103 in costs and have confirmed they will comply with the order, as a spokeswoman said they were unable to cook the liver to council standards without compromising on taste.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...poisoning.html

Is that micro-management, or the law coming down on the side of health protection? Perhaps you think freedom must allow someone to eat food knowing that it carries a fatal risk, as long as the restaurant points this out to the customer? But is it in the interests of any restaurant to murder its customers?

On the history, I was not making an assertion that history 'justified' the actions of any member of the PLO, I was suggesting that history can explain it, which is not the same thing. If you choose to disregard the ideological imperatives of Palestinian guerilla groups in the 1970s as if it had no meaning, that is your choice, I am not suggesting that the Palestinian cause was 'just' and I have condemned the murders in Munich anyway; but reducing an act of murder to an act of murder alone, which does not exist in many laws (which take context into consideration) removes the political objective of the Palestinian 'struggle' as it was in the 1970s, and thus erases the context in which it happened, just as the violence of the Peasant's Revolt can have no attachment to freedom from your point of view, because it was merely violence. The context, in which men were not free, is presumably irrelevant.

The figure I gave of 25% is obviously not exact, to determine the taxes paid in Medieval England you would need to first consider the fact that serfdom itself is an economic/moral tax of 100% on life, that in addition there were numerous taxes, such as the wool tax, and taxes on other commodities that any time might mean the peasant was effectively living on productive land and destitute at the same time, because he owned none of it, but was still required to pay taxes, or tithes, and also present himself and his sons for the military adventures dreamed up by the local baron or the King. To compare the rate of taxation in the 14th century to what we pay today is meaningless without the context. You might as well claim we have not been free since the days when we wiped woad on our skins and lived in caves, because there were no taxes.