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On November 26 2013 14:55 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. . I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. ...the enlightenment when 99% of the population were some kind of serf or slave? man, and i thought republicans with their lets go back to the 50s bizzaro nastaliga were weird...
I agree, though I'm going to be cheeky and add that I find the left's desire to go back to the 50's weird as well 
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On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom.
Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism).
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On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism).
So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism?
Ah, well. Clearly you are the type I was referring to. No hard feelings.
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On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations.
You a relative of sam's? All this talk of the current system of wage-slavery, no end to the slavery of blacks, criminilization of the poor, paternalistic oppression, propaganda. Can we come down from these esoteric musings?
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If you spend all your time trying to diagnose the problems of this society and think high lofty thoughts about how your ideal system would be organized (apparently some very egalitarian one, judging from this thread) then you risk watching all the progress that has been made slip away from you- at the hands of the "masters" you decry.
That being said, it is quite fun to completely leave the here and now and discuss perfection.
Edit: I guess that was just a long winded way of saying we are off topic.
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On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism?
we have been moving toward it more and more over the past 30 years. It was imposed in most countries in the world in the 1980's, but has remained strong ever since. It's not like there hasn't been huge popular resistance to it though. I think some people are moving away from it, but others are moving towards it.
I must stress that the ideology of free market fundamentalism does not exist in the real world except for third world countries. In the first world the priests have to break the rules of their own religion. The most known example is wall street receiving bailouts, then going back to work as usual as they worship Milton Friedman and Hayek. A study showed that the top 100 multinational corporations have all received some sort of government assistance.
That's pretty normal of what ideology does though, it's like the Dostoevsky story about the grand inquisitor. When Jesus Christ returns to earth he is persecuted by the church for his unchristian like behavior. Or it's also like the animals in George Orwell's animal farm. They preach equality but don't practice it themselves. For market fundamentalism they preach market discipline but don't practice it themselves.
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On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? Ah, well. Clearly you are the type I was referring to. No hard feelings.
None taken. Although my own idea of the world is that all major institutions should be democratic.
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On November 26 2013 15:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 14:55 Sub40APM wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. . I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. ...the enlightenment when 99% of the population were some kind of serf or slave? man, and i thought republicans with their lets go back to the 50s bizzaro nastaliga were weird... I agree, though I'm going to be cheeky and add that I find the left's desire to go back to the 50's weird as well
I think most leftists would probably look at like the early 70s, isnt that when the real income growth starts diverging for the non-capitalist classes and the stagnation period sets in while unions die?
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On November 26 2013 15:51 Introvert wrote:
If you spend all your time trying to diagnose the problems of this society and think high lofty thoughts about how your ideal system would be organized (apparently some very egalitarian one, judging from this thread) then you risk watching all the progress that has been made slip away from you- at the hands of the "masters" you decry.
That being said, it is quite fun to completely leave the here and now and discuss perfection.
Edit: I guess that was just a long winded way of saying we are off topic.
i hope you -- the resident constitutional originalist par excellence -- can appreciate the irony of your post!
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On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? Ah, well. Clearly you are the type I was referring to. No hard feelings.
Unfortunately those who are uneducated cling to any argument that is vaguely reminiscent of their inbred ideology, while dismissing the simplified, bastardized ideas of serious thinkers who came before them. Doesn't it seem ironic to you that you have taken an anti-intellectual position while positioning yourself as the champion of doubt and honest soul-searching? Did you take a break from Fox News to join in the discussion?
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On November 26 2013 15:38 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. I don't think we live in the most prosperous time. Real wages have stagnated over the last 35 years, working hours have gone up. Third world diseases that were eradicated are returning. More children are starving. there is also less democracy(labor unions have been destroyed) and a more atomized society. I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. Also on your earlier point, i'd point out that our current system was called wage-slavery and was a mainstream position by american factory girls in the 19th century. There are also arguments by good writers/historians that note that slavery for black people never really ended until after WW2, as black life was criminalized after they were freed-leading to a life that had just as little freedom as slavery. Being poor has been criminalized again over the past 35 years under the neoliberal period with the war on drugs. Language and political power has an amazing amount of delusion to it though. It sees itself as logical, objective and fair. It's oppression is paternalistic, as it sees its subjects as inferior, stupid people. When it's subjects call their oppression wage slavery, they will change the name to wage labor. When it's subjects call their journalism propaganda, they change its name to public relations. You a relative of sam's? All this talk of the current system of wage-slavery, no end to the slavery of blacks, criminilization of the poor, paternalistic oppression, propaganda. Can we come down from these esoteric musings?
I think it's good that i use language like that, and talk about things that way-i think it's more honest. Some people will instantly hate me, but others might be inquisitive and ask me what i meant by that, and ask me for sources to back up that information. Also, the language poses problems for people. If you continue saying something that's normal, most people will just agree. But if you pose a problem, maybe people will try to solve it.
i read a lot of similar material as sam does probably. I only started posting in this thread recently and the 'what are you reading thread'. Also, i don't think my views are too esoteric as you might think. Some of the stuff i get my ideas from is written by people in the third world and i find a lot of that text is omitted here. But there are more people in the third world!
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On November 26 2013 16:06 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:51 Introvert wrote:
If you spend all your time trying to diagnose the problems of this society and think high lofty thoughts about how your ideal system would be organized (apparently some very egalitarian one, judging from this thread) then you risk watching all the progress that has been made slip away from you- at the hands of the "masters" you decry.
That being said, it is quite fun to completely leave the here and now and discuss perfection.
Edit: I guess that was just a long winded way of saying we are off topic. i hope you -- the resident constitutional originalist par excellence -- can appreciate the irony of your post!
I can! However, it seems to me that a return to original Constitutional principles is certainly much more likely and tangible than everything else discussed in this thread. Technically speaking, the mechanisms for appropriate changes already exist, and they don't require any sort of revolution or the acceptance of an idea contrary to that of the current American society. I believe the nation would still label itself as accepting, or even supportive, of (most) Constitutional principles. Even many on the left manage to find things they like in the document.
If I thought that the road we are on is a roller coaster with no brakes and no alternate routes, I would stop caring enough to even discuss it.
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On November 26 2013 16:04 Sub40APM wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:17 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 14:55 Sub40APM wrote:On November 26 2013 14:47 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 14:06 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. We live in times where you are more free and more prosperous than any other time in history in any reasonable objective measure you might choose. People claiming how bad things are compared to imaginary period in the past simply do not know the past. Things can be better and we should try to make them better, but saying there was point in a past where they were better is just either ignorance of that past or completely skewed perspective. . I'd also argue that western culture peaked in the enlightenment when science and philosophy was like pop culture today, but it has been on the decline ever since. ...the enlightenment when 99% of the population were some kind of serf or slave? man, and i thought republicans with their lets go back to the 50s bizzaro nastaliga were weird... I agree, though I'm going to be cheeky and add that I find the left's desire to go back to the 50's weird as well I think most leftists would probably look at like the early 70s, isnt that when the real income growth starts diverging for the non-capitalist classes and the stagnation period sets in while unions die?
The metric of real wages is fundamentally flawed. It is based upon the consumer price index which is known to be inflationary, and does a terrible job of accounting for changes in standard of living. Real wages are only useful for rhetoric. Another important point is that much of the losses in American wages have resulted in improved wages in other parts of the world. A decline in US wages is actually an example of the market being more efficient and egalitarian, much to the dismay of American workers.
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On November 26 2013 15:56 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? we have been moving toward it more and more over the past 30 years. It was imposed in most countries in the world in the 1980's, but has remained strong ever since. It's not like there hasn't been huge popular resistance to it though. I think some people are moving away from it, but others are moving towards it. I must stress that the ideology of free market fundamentalism does not exist in the real world except for third world countries. In the first world the priests have to break the rules of their own religion. The most known example is wall street receiving bailouts, then going back to work as usual as they worship Milton Friedman and Hayek. A study showed that the top 100 multinational corporations have all received some sort of government assistance. That's pretty normal of what ideology does though, it's like the Dostoevsky story about the grand inquisitor. When Jesus Christ returns to earth he is persecuted by the church for his unchristian like behavior. Or it's also like the animals in George Orwell's animal farm. They preach equality but don't practice it themselves. For market fundamentalism they preach market discipline but don't practice it themselves.
I'm sorry, but you're terribly wrong, especially the view that 'multi-national' corporations are some beacon of 'free market fundamentalism'. Perhaps you might have meant Fascism, or Corporatism, but market fundamentalism? LOL. Us libertarians have been fighting them for over a 150 years. We fought against the Federal Reserve Act, we fought against subsidies and Corporate Welfare, we fought against Corporate privilege via State-writ, and we fought against Copyright/Patent and other forms of IP. We also fought against the Welfare State which inculcates these institutions from popular challenge, by reinforcing the status-quo via essentially a 'buy-out' at mostly the people's own expense. I could continue on, but you're entirely wrong and thus you come to heinously wrong conclusion about an economic and moral ideal you foist up as a strawman to tear down to make whatever socialist or marxist point you've all ready arrived at long ago.
For the past fifty years we've been drifting further away from markets and more towards either indirect Government control via regulation and Corporate-Government merging. I could go down about 200 different economic stratum that has become more regulated and monitored and thus more expensive. I could also go down about a few trillion dollars worth of extortion via Government by Corporate entities that we've been decrying for a long time now, not the least of which is the MIC and all the manipulations for the war-profiteers (going back to say the Anti-Imperialist League a distinctly libertarian late 1800s organization).
To say that we are in some market fundamentalist paradigm is quite frankly to a market anarchist and libertarian ethos beyond hilarious. To say we've been fighting the increase of this non-sense for many centuries, but we're somehow almost to 'our utopia' is laughable. Just ask any libertarian. If we were truly in a market fundamentalist paradigm you would see the abolishment of IP, Legal Tender laws and the Federal Reserve, the Regulatory State (property rights are the strictest regulations you need) - just to bolster this fact, take a look at the USC compared to 1900 hell even 1970, the Standing Army and Foreign Bases, all subsidies and Welfare, and the Income tax abolished. That's just a start. You can argue some 'good' things have happened, but on the whole Leviathan progresses (read the book Leviathan by Robert Higgs).
Let's take so-called Free-Trade...to us libertarians these can't be further from it's moniker. We tend to liken these to 1700's English Mercantilism. They're managed, bureaucratic, wrought with privilege, but hey no tariff! A free-trade agreement is essentially one page - open borders, free movement of capital, goods, and labor. Customs? Goodbye. Visas? Goodbye. Something tells me the immigration xenophobes won't be too happy about that one...
So, please, tell me as a libertarian that I should be happy. From my perspective hardly anything we want has occured, and precisely the opposite as happened. Ask any libertarian. Go e-mail Auburn's Roderick Long and tell him we should be ecstatic. I'd be eager to read his reply to you. 
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On November 26 2013 16:10 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? Ah, well. Clearly you are the type I was referring to. No hard feelings. Unfortunately those who are uneducated cling to any argument that is vaguely reminiscent of their inbred ideology, while dismissing the simplified, bastardized ideas of serious thinkers who came before them. Doesn't it seem ironic to you that you have taken an anti-intellectual position while positioning yourself as the champion of doubt and honest soul-searching? Did you take a break from Fox News to join in the discussion?
Nothing in my post was anti-intellectual. My idea of an intellectual is someone who is intentionally well rounded in knowledge and ideas, and engages in critical thinking. A person who desires a radical political perspective and spends years supporting and justifying it is not my idea of an intellectual. That's just a partisan.
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On November 26 2013 16:21 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:56 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? we have been moving toward it more and more over the past 30 years. It was imposed in most countries in the world in the 1980's, but has remained strong ever since. It's not like there hasn't been huge popular resistance to it though. I think some people are moving away from it, but others are moving towards it. I must stress that the ideology of free market fundamentalism does not exist in the real world except for third world countries. In the first world the priests have to break the rules of their own religion. The most known example is wall street receiving bailouts, then going back to work as usual as they worship Milton Friedman and Hayek. A study showed that the top 100 multinational corporations have all received some sort of government assistance. That's pretty normal of what ideology does though, it's like the Dostoevsky story about the grand inquisitor. When Jesus Christ returns to earth he is persecuted by the church for his unchristian like behavior. Or it's also like the animals in George Orwell's animal farm. They preach equality but don't practice it themselves. For market fundamentalism they preach market discipline but don't practice it themselves. I'm sorry, but you're terribly wrong, especially the view that 'multi-national' corporations are some beacon of 'free market fundamentalism'. Perhaps you might have meant Fascism, or Corporatism, but market fundamentalism? LOL. Us libertarians have been fighting them for over a 150 years. We fought against the Federal Reserve Act, we fought against subsidies and Corporate Welfare, we fought against Corporate privilege via State-writ, and we fought against Copyright/Patent and other forms of IP. We also fought against the Welfare State which inculcates these institutions from popular challenge, by reinforcing the status-quo via essentially a 'buy-out' at mostly the people's own expense. I could continue on, but you're entirely wrong and thus you come to heinously wrong conclusion about an economic and moral ideal you foist up as a strawman to tear down to make whatever socialist or marxist point you've all ready arrived at long ago. For the past fifty years we've been drifting further away from markets and more towards either indirect Government control via regulation and Corporate-Government merging. I could go down about 200 different economic stratum that has become more regulated and monitored and thus more expensive. I could also go down about a few trillion dollars worth of extortion via Government by Corporate entities that we've been decrying for a long time now, not the least of which is the MIC and all the manipulations for the war-profiteers (going back to say the Anti-Imperialist League a distinctly libertarian late 1800s organization). To say that we are in some market fundamentalist paradigm is quite frankly to a market anarchist and libertarian ethos beyond hilarious. To say we've been fighting the increase of this non-sense for many centuries, but we're somehow almost to 'our utopia' is laughable. Just ask any libertarian. If we were truly in a market fundamentalist paradigm you would see the abolishment of IP, Legal Tender laws and the Federal Reserve, the Regulatory State (property rights are the strictest regulations you need) - just to bolster this fact, take a look at the USC compared to 1900 hell even 1970, the Standing Army and Foreign Bases, all subsidies and Welfare, and the Income tax abolished. That's just a start. You can argue some 'good' things have happened, but on the whole Leviathan progresses (read the book Leviathan by Robert Higgs). Let's take so-called Free-Trade...to us libertarians these can't be further from it's moniker. We tend to liken these to 1700's English Mercantilism. They're managed, bureaucratic, wrought with privilege, but hey no tariff! A free-trade agreement is essentially one page - open borders, free movement of capital, goods, and labor. Customs? Goodbye. Visas? Goodbye. Something tells me the immigration xenophobes won't be too happy about that one... So, please, tell me as a libertarian that I should be happy. From my perspective hardly anything we want has occured, and precisely the opposite as happened. Ask any libertarian. Go e-mail Auburn's Roderick Long and tell him we should be ecstatic. I'd be eager to read his reply to you.
You know, when Communism collapsed in the USSR the people said, "the problem is not Communism." The problem was that they had an imperfect Communist system, with too many capitalist elements, or too many would-be tsars, or a lack of solidarity. Here you say the problem is not Capitalism, it is state intervention; it is the social democrats. The system is never the problem to such people. It is always that it is not being applied perfectly, that we are falling short of the ideals and principles of the system.
On November 26 2013 16:27 jacevedo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:10 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:On November 26 2013 10:06 KwarK wrote:
I'm gonna stick with my "Nazis were shitty people" theory if it's all the same to you Moltke. And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously. Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page. Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it. Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound. On November 26 2013 10:10 IgnE wrote:
The world is the will to power. Legal conditions are simply anemic restrictions on the will of life, and are therefore subordinate to its goals. As Nietzsche would say:
A legal order thought of as sovereign and universal, not as a means in the struggle between power complexes but as a means of preventing all struggle in general perhaps after the communistic cliché of Dühring, that every will must consider every other will its equal—would be a principle hostile to life, an agent of the dissolution and destruction of man, an attempt to assassinate the future of man, a sign of weariness, a secret path to nothingness. Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum). Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? Ah, well. Clearly you are the type I was referring to. No hard feelings. Unfortunately those who are uneducated cling to any argument that is vaguely reminiscent of their inbred ideology, while dismissing the simplified, bastardized ideas of serious thinkers who came before them. Doesn't it seem ironic to you that you have taken an anti-intellectual position while positioning yourself as the champion of doubt and honest soul-searching? Did you take a break from Fox News to join in the discussion? Nothing in my post was anti-intellectual. My idea of an intellectual is someone who is intentionally well rounded in knowledge and ideas, and engages in critical thinking. A person who desires a radical political perspective and spends years supporting and justifying it is not my idea of an intellectual. That's just a partisan.
You have a strange conception of how beliefs form. I suppose you think that the truths of the free market are self evident and that anyone who disagrees must be spending years spinning rationalizations just to be contrarian.
I suppose you also think that real wages don't mean anything because now we can have flat screen tvs and ipods.
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On November 26 2013 16:30 IgnE wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:21 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 15:56 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 11:39 Tula wrote:
[quote]
And all of us here know that you are far too intelligent to make such a generalisation seriously.
Though I must ask how we drifted to Nazi-Germany again? I seem to have missed a turn or two in the last page.
Freedom itself isn't worth anything obviously, it is an ideal or state of being some people claim to seek. If you leave philosophy and consider how "free" you as an individual specifically are you'll find many things restricting your freedom that either benefit you, or that pay off in other less obvious ways. Classic example are families, often you will behave in certain ways (differing depending on the family obviously) to fit in with yours. On the one hand that makes you less free, but obviously you will gain things (love, acknowledgement, support etc.) from it.
Society as a whole restricts quite a few of your individual freedoms to either set some ground rules of behavior or to try and make us get along. The amount of freedom people are willing to give up to live peacefully in a society was one of the basic tenents of the formation of states. You might argue that we have given up too much, personally I think in some areas that that is true, but the fundamental principle is still sound.
[quote]
Right, so we should do away with legal order and go back to might makes right? I'm honestly confused what you are trying to say. Obviously laws try to regulate how we behave specifically to prevent that. Legal conditions (Laws in other words) are what enables us to live together semi-peacefully frankly I'm fine with giving up a bit of my freedom for that (in any other case I'd need to stop discussing this here and instead try to find the nearest bunker to prepare for a siege... to take this argument ab absurdum).
Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? we have been moving toward it more and more over the past 30 years. It was imposed in most countries in the world in the 1980's, but has remained strong ever since. It's not like there hasn't been huge popular resistance to it though. I think some people are moving away from it, but others are moving towards it. I must stress that the ideology of free market fundamentalism does not exist in the real world except for third world countries. In the first world the priests have to break the rules of their own religion. The most known example is wall street receiving bailouts, then going back to work as usual as they worship Milton Friedman and Hayek. A study showed that the top 100 multinational corporations have all received some sort of government assistance. That's pretty normal of what ideology does though, it's like the Dostoevsky story about the grand inquisitor. When Jesus Christ returns to earth he is persecuted by the church for his unchristian like behavior. Or it's also like the animals in George Orwell's animal farm. They preach equality but don't practice it themselves. For market fundamentalism they preach market discipline but don't practice it themselves. I'm sorry, but you're terribly wrong, especially the view that 'multi-national' corporations are some beacon of 'free market fundamentalism'. Perhaps you might have meant Fascism, or Corporatism, but market fundamentalism? LOL. Us libertarians have been fighting them for over a 150 years. We fought against the Federal Reserve Act, we fought against subsidies and Corporate Welfare, we fought against Corporate privilege via State-writ, and we fought against Copyright/Patent and other forms of IP. We also fought against the Welfare State which inculcates these institutions from popular challenge, by reinforcing the status-quo via essentially a 'buy-out' at mostly the people's own expense. I could continue on, but you're entirely wrong and thus you come to heinously wrong conclusion about an economic and moral ideal you foist up as a strawman to tear down to make whatever socialist or marxist point you've all ready arrived at long ago. For the past fifty years we've been drifting further away from markets and more towards either indirect Government control via regulation and Corporate-Government merging. I could go down about 200 different economic stratum that has become more regulated and monitored and thus more expensive. I could also go down about a few trillion dollars worth of extortion via Government by Corporate entities that we've been decrying for a long time now, not the least of which is the MIC and all the manipulations for the war-profiteers (going back to say the Anti-Imperialist League a distinctly libertarian late 1800s organization). To say that we are in some market fundamentalist paradigm is quite frankly to a market anarchist and libertarian ethos beyond hilarious. To say we've been fighting the increase of this non-sense for many centuries, but we're somehow almost to 'our utopia' is laughable. Just ask any libertarian. If we were truly in a market fundamentalist paradigm you would see the abolishment of IP, Legal Tender laws and the Federal Reserve, the Regulatory State (property rights are the strictest regulations you need) - just to bolster this fact, take a look at the USC compared to 1900 hell even 1970, the Standing Army and Foreign Bases, all subsidies and Welfare, and the Income tax abolished. That's just a start. You can argue some 'good' things have happened, but on the whole Leviathan progresses (read the book Leviathan by Robert Higgs). Let's take so-called Free-Trade...to us libertarians these can't be further from it's moniker. We tend to liken these to 1700's English Mercantilism. They're managed, bureaucratic, wrought with privilege, but hey no tariff! A free-trade agreement is essentially one page - open borders, free movement of capital, goods, and labor. Customs? Goodbye. Visas? Goodbye. Something tells me the immigration xenophobes won't be too happy about that one... So, please, tell me as a libertarian that I should be happy. From my perspective hardly anything we want has occured, and precisely the opposite as happened. Ask any libertarian. Go e-mail Auburn's Roderick Long and tell him we should be ecstatic. I'd be eager to read his reply to you. You know, when Communism collapsed in the USSR the people said, "the problem is not Communism." The problem was that they had an imperfect Communist system, with too many capitalist elements, or too many would-be tsars, or a lack of solidarity. Here you say the problem is not Capitalism, it is state intervention; it is the social democrats. The system is never the problem to such people. It is always that it is not being applied perfectly, that we are falling short of the ideals and principles of the system.
The system is the problem, and the system is the State. Market 'fundamentalism' says take the power from the State, and give it back to its rightful owners - the individual. The system IS the Federal Reserve, the Legal Tender laws, the Regulatory State, the merger of Corporation and State, and on and on down a huge list. What don't you understand about this? None of this is anything remotely to do with libertarianism. None of these things were ever passed by a libertarian, praised by a libertarian, or solicited by a libertarian. The most famous libertarian politician in contemporary times is Ron Paul, and everyone knows how much of a dismal legislative failure he was. So, please, tell me how we are living in the age of libertarianism? What this tells me is you can't face the fact that the problems today are a result of the aforementioned, and you can't just pawn it off on scapegoats like libertarians who haven't had a prominent seat of power since Calvin Coolidge or perhaps the last of the Old Right in the 1930's and 40's like Howard Buffet and early Robert Taft.
I'm sure this is exactly like Leninists and Stalinists of the USSR whose manifesto being Das Kapital is actually not Marxism. Please, let me know when we arrive at the Market Anarchy of Molinari, Rothbard, Nock, de Jasay, and most prominent contemporary libertarian academics. Foolish me who thought the pillars of power in this country is in the Established status-quo Fascism of the Left variety and Right variety.
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the market and the state are the same thing. unity of opposites bro
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On November 26 2013 16:39 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:30 IgnE wrote:On November 26 2013 16:21 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 15:56 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:29 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 15:25 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:14 jacevedo wrote:On November 26 2013 09:42 MoltkeWarding wrote:
The legalistic epoch of Western Civilization appeared sometime during the apex of the Modern Age in the 18th century, reached its zenith during the Victorian Era and suffered a long and steady erosion since the shattering of the long peace in 1914. That today ethical legalism is being deconstructed by all kinds of "realists" is hardly insightful or revolutionary.
In 1914 Bethmann Hollweg's denunciation of the Treaty of London as a "scrap of paper" was shocking to the civilised world, precisely because it represented the violation of an ethical custom which, whatever shortcomings it may appear to possess today, was a positive constructive identity upon which a standard for civilised behaviour had been based for over a century.
And this is why Kwark as usual is completely wrong in his interpretation of the ethical significance of "Nazi Germany" in the 20th century: the Germans were merely the first to recognise the validity of his own principles: neither in 1914 and 1933 did they feel that they owed loyalty to outdated treaties, or an unpopular democratic constitution, or an illegitimate republic. Nor did it have anything to do with the "quality of the people"; the German middle-classes were the best-educated and most idealistic people in the world. That they were so exacerbated, rather than relieved the problem. During the first half of the 20th century, the German claim to moral supremacy over the "mercantile" English was based on an ethical self-conception, that German values of Bildung and Kultur were superior to shallow English values (well summarised by Biff's citation.) The Germans were the first to realise the supremacy of individual self-cultivation over petty legalism, and history will speak to its fate. For millions of Germans, the coming of Hitler represented a kind of liberation from a poisonous bourgeois order, from outdated modes of social duties and engagements which no longer seemed relevant for the modern world. On November 26 2013 13:56 Wegandi wrote:On November 26 2013 12:45 mcc wrote:On November 26 2013 12:23 IgnE wrote:
[quote]
Laws are manifestations of some other's power. Slave-slaveholder relations can also outwardly be pretty peaceful. Funny how all extreme views always seem to try to equate modern society with slave-holding society on some level at least to make their tortured point. Heard it from anarcho-capitalists asking what is the difference between taxes and slavery, heard it from communists saying any hierarchical ownership is equal to slavery. Now we have this equation of laws and slavery. People love their black and white views and flawed analogies. Master-Serf makes no difference. The problem with the 'law' as is, is both the perception of the people that it is codified social engineering instead of recognition of justice and liberty, and that it is highly hypocritical (e.g. The State determines itself a monopoly on a wide range of services, but then 'outlaws' what it believes to be monopoly (having a certain % of market share), then there is the legalized thievery and barbarism of so-called Police who can beat you, kill you, etc. without provocation and then be heralded as hero's...Miriam Carey anyone?). The former is probably a bigger problem than the latter. Society today has become a cesspool of petty tyrants all wanting to legislate their personal preferences - are you the nanny-state socialist, the bible-thumper, the inquisitor, the real petty tyrant who just wants to tell others what they can do, or are you the idealistic type who wants to mold everyone into his/her version of ideal, etc. The recognition that we own ourselves, and thus have inalienable liberties that have no justification to be aggressed against is hardly to be seen in the fabric of society. The Marxists say homesteading and the liberty of trade and contract is slavery, the Socialists say you the individual are a nuisance and the collective must be served (though the collective is always headed by an individual...who usually enjoys all the benefits at the expense of the lay people), the Bible-thumpers say the Kingdom of Heaven must be brought to Earth and any transgression should be highly penalized and outlawed, and here the libertarian sits and says, hold on, none of you have any right over the body and actions of another, that the law must be for the upholding of justice as defined as a violation of individual liberty, and shut the fuck up and start worrying about your own life instead of being busy-bodies and moral-do-gooders in everyone elses. We're at a point in society where we just need to say Fuck you, your imposed systems, your hypocrisy, we're going to live our own lives and if you want a fight, we're more than ready. At least America has a tradition to look back upon...maybe we'll find that spirit once more. Two quite brilliant posts. Whether you agree with the premises or not they are both well written and thought provoking. What is most lacking today is a simple sense of humility. Too many of the over-educated spend their hours reinforcing their own beliefs and rejecting any quite legitimate counters or criticisms to their convictions. They read books which reinforce their beliefs, rationalize any inconsistencies, and look down on those who think differently than they do, as sort of a defense mechanism. And this, because they've come to personally identify with their philosophy. They have convinced themselves they know what is best for the world, and have rooted out all necessary doubt. It's all quite common and quite harmless until these excessive convictions reach a position of power. A man of great conviction is a dangerous thing, especially when that conviction is not tempered with the humility to accept that you could be in error, and that imposing your will upon others because you are sure they are wrong could lead to not only their harm and ruin but your own as well. Unfortunately the more educated by modern institutions a person is, the less likely they appear to doubt their own learning. We've come too far from Socratic wisdom. Yep, that's like half the problem of the world, and it's just as bad as it ever was. All the top Ivy League universities have unfortunately trained technocrats to impose their beliefs on the rest of the world in such brutal oppression and delusion (the beliefs of free market fundamentalism). So you believe we are moving toward free market fundamentalism? we have been moving toward it more and more over the past 30 years. It was imposed in most countries in the world in the 1980's, but has remained strong ever since. It's not like there hasn't been huge popular resistance to it though. I think some people are moving away from it, but others are moving towards it. I must stress that the ideology of free market fundamentalism does not exist in the real world except for third world countries. In the first world the priests have to break the rules of their own religion. The most known example is wall street receiving bailouts, then going back to work as usual as they worship Milton Friedman and Hayek. A study showed that the top 100 multinational corporations have all received some sort of government assistance. That's pretty normal of what ideology does though, it's like the Dostoevsky story about the grand inquisitor. When Jesus Christ returns to earth he is persecuted by the church for his unchristian like behavior. Or it's also like the animals in George Orwell's animal farm. They preach equality but don't practice it themselves. For market fundamentalism they preach market discipline but don't practice it themselves. I'm sorry, but you're terribly wrong, especially the view that 'multi-national' corporations are some beacon of 'free market fundamentalism'. Perhaps you might have meant Fascism, or Corporatism, but market fundamentalism? LOL. Us libertarians have been fighting them for over a 150 years. We fought against the Federal Reserve Act, we fought against subsidies and Corporate Welfare, we fought against Corporate privilege via State-writ, and we fought against Copyright/Patent and other forms of IP. We also fought against the Welfare State which inculcates these institutions from popular challenge, by reinforcing the status-quo via essentially a 'buy-out' at mostly the people's own expense. I could continue on, but you're entirely wrong and thus you come to heinously wrong conclusion about an economic and moral ideal you foist up as a strawman to tear down to make whatever socialist or marxist point you've all ready arrived at long ago. For the past fifty years we've been drifting further away from markets and more towards either indirect Government control via regulation and Corporate-Government merging. I could go down about 200 different economic stratum that has become more regulated and monitored and thus more expensive. I could also go down about a few trillion dollars worth of extortion via Government by Corporate entities that we've been decrying for a long time now, not the least of which is the MIC and all the manipulations for the war-profiteers (going back to say the Anti-Imperialist League a distinctly libertarian late 1800s organization). To say that we are in some market fundamentalist paradigm is quite frankly to a market anarchist and libertarian ethos beyond hilarious. To say we've been fighting the increase of this non-sense for many centuries, but we're somehow almost to 'our utopia' is laughable. Just ask any libertarian. If we were truly in a market fundamentalist paradigm you would see the abolishment of IP, Legal Tender laws and the Federal Reserve, the Regulatory State (property rights are the strictest regulations you need) - just to bolster this fact, take a look at the USC compared to 1900 hell even 1970, the Standing Army and Foreign Bases, all subsidies and Welfare, and the Income tax abolished. That's just a start. You can argue some 'good' things have happened, but on the whole Leviathan progresses (read the book Leviathan by Robert Higgs). Let's take so-called Free-Trade...to us libertarians these can't be further from it's moniker. We tend to liken these to 1700's English Mercantilism. They're managed, bureaucratic, wrought with privilege, but hey no tariff! A free-trade agreement is essentially one page - open borders, free movement of capital, goods, and labor. Customs? Goodbye. Visas? Goodbye. Something tells me the immigration xenophobes won't be too happy about that one... So, please, tell me as a libertarian that I should be happy. From my perspective hardly anything we want has occured, and precisely the opposite as happened. Ask any libertarian. Go e-mail Auburn's Roderick Long and tell him we should be ecstatic. I'd be eager to read his reply to you. You know, when Communism collapsed in the USSR the people said, "the problem is not Communism." The problem was that they had an imperfect Communist system, with too many capitalist elements, or too many would-be tsars, or a lack of solidarity. Here you say the problem is not Capitalism, it is state intervention; it is the social democrats. The system is never the problem to such people. It is always that it is not being applied perfectly, that we are falling short of the ideals and principles of the system. The system is the problem, and the system is the State. Market 'fundamentalism' says take the power from the State, and give it back to its rightful owners - the individual. The system IS the Federal Reserve, the Legal Tender laws, the Regulatory State, the merger of Corporation and State, and on and on down a huge list. What don't you understand about this? None of this is anything remotely to do with libertarianism. None of these things were ever passed by a libertarian, praised by a libertarian, or solicited by a libertarian. The most famous libertarian politician in contemporary times is Ron Paul, and everyone knows how much of a dismal legislative failure he was. So, please, tell me how we are living in the age of libertarianism? What this tells me is you can't face the fact that the problems today are a result of the aforementioned, and you can't just pawn it off on scapegoats like libertarians who haven't had a prominent seat of power since Calvin Coolidge or perhaps the last of the Old Right in the 1930's and 40's like Howard Buffet and early Robert Taft. I'm sure this is exactly like Leninists and Stalinists of the USSR whose manifesto being Das Kapital is actually not Marxism. Please, let me know when we arrive at the Market Anarchy of Molinari, Rothbard, Nock, de Jasay, and most prominent contemporary libertarian academics. Foolish me who thought the pillars of power in this country is in the Established status-quo Fascism of the Left variety and Right variety.
I'm sorry we aren't living up to the true Capitalism yet, Wegandi. But maybe if we truly had a libertarian government the glaring contradictions inherent in a Capitalist system wouldn't dissolve the social fabric, and we could usher in a Golden Age of Libertarianism.
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EPT
