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On November 26 2013 16:12 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 15:38 Danglars 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 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!
It's not the language, it's your approach to the topic. It could use a single point of entry and then expansion. If we start at this abstract concept of slavery, and move to this other abstract concept of slavery, then on to the criminalization of this group, paternalistic that, neoliberal period this ... we don't get anywhere. Several courses of a meal are welcome, but heaping every tray from the buffet table onto one giant plate is a little hard to tackle.
Sam usually has discernible focus, though talks on quantitative easing will soon become his take on communist theory, and inevitably lead back to the fracking.
Warning: Dull roar hyperbole
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On November 26 2013 16:46 sam!zdat wrote:
the market and the state are the same thing. unity of opposites bro
They couldn't be further apart. There's a reason Oppenheimer called the two means to satisfy economic needs 1) The Commercial or Market, and 2) The Political or parasitical. He wasn't some bastion of libertarianism either as he was a noted Socialist. At least he understood the essential differences, unlike it appears this Marxist.
sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." (pp. 24-25) - Der Staat Franz Oppenheimer
Next time you sell something or trade something, tell me that is the same thing as the States gendarmes marching on your door hauling you off to a cage because you 'failed to pay your tax'. The Mafia, the Mob, the State - no difference. All extract your property from you via violence and force this state upon you under some fabled Social Contract you neither were alive when it came about, or ever signed or consented to, and it is especially vague and only violations of it on the part of yourself is ever 'punished'.
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On November 26 2013 16:56 Wegandi wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:46 sam!zdat wrote:
the market and the state are the same thing. unity of opposites bro They couldn't be further apart. There's a reason Oppenheimer called the two means to satisfy economic needs 1) The Commercial or Market, and 2) The Political or parasitical. He wasn't some bastion of libertarianism either as he was a noted Socialist. At least he understood the essential differences, unlike it appears this Marxist. Show nested quote +sharply opposing terms for these very important contrasts, I propose in the following discussion to call one's own labor and the equivalent exchange of one's own labor for the labor of others, the “economic means" for the satisfaction of needs, while the unrequited appropriation of the labor of others will be called the "political means." (pp. 24-25) - Der Staat Franz Oppenheimer Next time you sell something or trade something, tell me that is the same thing as the States gendarmes marching on your door hauling you off to a cage because you 'failed to pay your tax'. The Mafia, the Mob, the State - no difference. All extract your property from you via violence and force this state upon you under some fabled Social Contract you neither were alive when it came about, or ever signed or consented to, and it is especially vague and only violations of it on the part of yourself is ever 'punished'.
A distinction without a difference. In any case, you have no property to be extracted without the state. Try to survive in a Capitalist system without being coerced into selling your labor power.
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On November 26 2013 16:54 Danglars wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:12 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 15:38 Danglars 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 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! It's not the language, it's your approach to the topic. It could use a single point of entry and then expansion. If we start at this abstract concept of slavery, and move to this other abstract concept of slavery, then on to the criminalization of this group, paternalistic that, neoliberal period this ... we don't get anywhere. Several courses of a meal are welcome, but heaping every tray from the buffet table onto one giant plate is a little hard to tackle. Sam usually has discernible focus, though talks on quantitative easing will soon become his take on communist theory, and inevitably lead back to the fracking. Warning: Dull roar hyperbole
Ah i see. I'm not a great writer but i'll try to improve on it next time.
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Your writing is fine, Danglars is making a political point.
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On November 26 2013 16:30 IgnE wrote:
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 problem in the ussr was that it was in Russia. it had nothing to do with communism or some inability to hold to ideals of the system (though they didn't).
corruption, inefficiency; it never really changed, Russia was a sucky place to live under the tsars, under communism, and in its capitalist democratic form; and when reverting back to some form of autocracy.
Russia was just bad news with any government.
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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.
The system is not just the state: there are many systems such as civil society, unions, corporations, churches, families, and even informal systems such as class and race systems, etc. Removing the state simply because it is the most formally-codified system won't magically solve all problems. There are even all sorts of different systems for running an individual business. Even individuals are systems! After all, there is no such thing as Margaret Thatcher: there are individual cells, and there are organs.
Also, kind of nitpicky, but Das Kapital is not any kind of manifesto: you're thinking of the Communist Manifesto. Das Kapital is about Capitalism specifically (which is its own system too!)
My point is that fetishizing the state is misguided. You can have a healthy society with a strong state, and regressive society with a strong state, and a healthy society with a weak state, and a regressive society with a weak state. The state is not the only factor in human freedom. It's not even necessarily the largest factor in determining whether people are free in all times and places! After all, there are stateless societies without markets. There are even people who advocate for markets without a state who fervently oppose Libertarianism (Syndicalists primarily) because they consider Capital as oppressive as police power.
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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.
Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined.
Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced.
The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it.
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On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it.
I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income.
You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs.
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On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs.
New diseases appear, question is are we living longer and healthier ? Longer definitely, most likely also healthier. Every trend points to it except our lack of exercise and too much food. But lack of exercise and obesity are results of this unprecedented freedom and prosperity we have and that is what I claimed. Standard of poverty has also risen. Today's poor live in luxury compared to poor in 19th century. Of course some things are missing, especially in US, like universal public healthcare system, reasonably priced or "free" education, better safety net, but even lacking those people are still better off than they were in the not-so-recent past. And as far as freedoms go, there is no comparison with any point in time in the past at all.
EDIT: as for the 19th century culture, it is telling that even though not completely bad, a lot of people could not even read, there is absolutely no comparison today. And popular culture at that time was the same, driven by "profit and seduction" as you call it, you just see it differently from your vantage point in the present, because of course most of that crap did not survive, but it does not mean it was not there. What survives a time period culturally is not necessarily good representation of popular culture of the time.
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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.
Libertarians reminds me our fascist far right. They don't make any sense whatsoever, but since their theories are so dumb they have never been tested, they always come up with the argument: yeah but you guys have failed while we haven't.
And if you show them that when their ideas have been tried a bit it has given horrendous results (like reducing taxes for the rich have created so much inequalities, deregulating finance has fuck up the whole economy for the profit of few etc...), they explain you that it's because we haven't done enough, we haven't been to the absurd extreme they advocate.
You guys have one idea: the state is the problem of everything. That's it. You don't think any further. You don't see nuances. You are stuck in a ridiculous ideology in which you have identified the evil and you don't think anymore.
What you guys want is the jungle. There is no freedom in the jungle. Just the law of the strongest.
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On November 27 2013 00:10 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 16:39 Wegandi wrote: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:
[quote]
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. Libertarians reminds me our fascist far right. They don't make any sense whatsoever, but since their theories are so dumb they have never been tested, they always come up with the argument: yeah but you guys have failed while we haven't. And if you show them that when their ideas have been tried a bit it has given horrendous results (like reducing taxes for the rich have created so much inequalities, deregulating finance has fuck up the whole economy for the profit of few etc...), they explain you that it's because we haven't done enough, we haven't been to the absurd extreme they advocate. You guys have one idea: the state is the problem of everything. That's it. You don't think any further. You don't see nuances. You are stuck in a ridiculous ideology in which you have identified the evil and you don't think anymore. What you guys want is the jungle. There is no freedom in the jungle. Just the law of the strongest.
He is more like anarcho-capitalist, as there are many libertarians that have no problem with small enough state. And they are more like extreme left-wing rather than fascists. The same as extreme left wing they see the state as a problem and want to eliminate it. They just differ in what they think will happen afterwards. And both groups are incapable of seeing nuances and practical and pragmatic solutions and never entertain the thought that real world might be too complex to solve with one simple slogan.
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On November 27 2013 00:47 mcc wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 00:10 Biff The Understudy wrote:On November 26 2013 16:39 Wegandi wrote: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:
[quote]
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. Libertarians reminds me our fascist far right. They don't make any sense whatsoever, but since their theories are so dumb they have never been tested, they always come up with the argument: yeah but you guys have failed while we haven't. And if you show them that when their ideas have been tried a bit it has given horrendous results (like reducing taxes for the rich have created so much inequalities, deregulating finance has fuck up the whole economy for the profit of few etc...), they explain you that it's because we haven't done enough, we haven't been to the absurd extreme they advocate. You guys have one idea: the state is the problem of everything. That's it. You don't think any further. You don't see nuances. You are stuck in a ridiculous ideology in which you have identified the evil and you don't think anymore. What you guys want is the jungle. There is no freedom in the jungle. Just the law of the strongest. He is more like anarcho-capitalist, as there are many libertarians that have no problem with small enough state. And they are more like extreme left-wing rather than fascists. The same as extreme left wing they see the state as a problem and want to eliminate it. They just differ in what they think will happen afterwards. And both groups are incapable of seeing nuances and practical and pragmatic solutions and never entertain the thought that real world might be too complex to solve with one simple slogan.
I know I was just making a parallel with our own extremists, who happen to be mostly fascists.
American "Libertarians" are certainly not left wingers; on economic issue they are as far on the right as one get, meaning that they do not think that society has to organize whatsoever itself to help the most vulnerable people.
I think libertarians socialists and libertarians à la Ayn Rand are as far to each other as one get on the political spectrum. Left wing libertarians oppose the state because they consider it to be serving the ruling class (which means the state as we know it is not enough representative of the common interest), to use Marx words, while Ron Paul guys oppose the state as the only form of opposition to the absolute tyranny of private property, individualism and private interests.
Interestingly enough, the state marxists or anarcho syndicalists oppose is the regalian state, meaning, the army, the police, the adminsitration, justice, etc..., while far right libbies oppose mainly everything that is meant to correct the excess of capitalism or to protect people: health, education, social programs etc...
So when Ayn Rand and Marx talk about the State, they not only see it very differently, but mostly talk about completely different things.
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On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs.
Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline:
![[image loading]](http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-5tlinnN9fZQ/Uju3PbmbNMI/AAAAAAAAELg/bsF9QXTaowU/s400/poverty+2.jpg)
Link
... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income:
![[image loading]](https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/72070179/ATI.PNG)
If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan.
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On November 27 2013 01:17 Biff The Understudy wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 00:47 mcc wrote:On November 27 2013 00:10 Biff The Understudy wrote:On November 26 2013 16:39 Wegandi wrote: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:
[quote]
[quote]
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. Libertarians reminds me our fascist far right. They don't make any sense whatsoever, but since their theories are so dumb they have never been tested, they always come up with the argument: yeah but you guys have failed while we haven't. And if you show them that when their ideas have been tried a bit it has given horrendous results (like reducing taxes for the rich have created so much inequalities, deregulating finance has fuck up the whole economy for the profit of few etc...), they explain you that it's because we haven't done enough, we haven't been to the absurd extreme they advocate. You guys have one idea: the state is the problem of everything. That's it. You don't think any further. You don't see nuances. You are stuck in a ridiculous ideology in which you have identified the evil and you don't think anymore. What you guys want is the jungle. There is no freedom in the jungle. Just the law of the strongest. He is more like anarcho-capitalist, as there are many libertarians that have no problem with small enough state. And they are more like extreme left-wing rather than fascists. The same as extreme left wing they see the state as a problem and want to eliminate it. They just differ in what they think will happen afterwards. And both groups are incapable of seeing nuances and practical and pragmatic solutions and never entertain the thought that real world might be too complex to solve with one simple slogan. I know I was just making a parallel with our own extremists, who happen to be mostly fascists. American "Libertarians" are certainly not left wingers; on economic issue they are as far on the right as one get, meaning that they do not think that society has to organize whatsoever itself to help the most vulnerable people. I think libertarians socialists and libertarians à la Ayn Rand are as far to each other as one get on the political spectrum. Left wing libertarians oppose the state because they consider it to be serving the ruling class (which means the state as we know it is not enough representative of the common interest), to use Marx words, while Ron Paul guys oppose the state as the only form of opposition to the absolute tyranny of private property, individualism and private interests. Interestingly enough, the state marxists or anarcho syndicalists oppose is the regalian state, meaning, the army, the police, the adminsitration, justice, etc..., while far right libbies oppose mainly everything that is meant to correct the excess of capitalism or to protect people: health, education, social programs etc... So when Ayn Rand and Marx talk about the State, they not only see it very differently, but mostly talk about completely different things.
My point was mostly that on the extremes left and right have so much in common it is funny how much they dislike each other  I do not consider fascists right-wing in this context, their brand of craziness comes from completely different axis.
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On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan.
Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse.
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On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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:
[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. 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse.
Both charts use inflation adjusted figures.
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On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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:
[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. 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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures.
Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too.
But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia).
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On November 27 2013 02:10 Acrofales wrote:Show nested quote +On November 27 2013 01:39 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 27 2013 01:35 Acrofales wrote:On November 27 2013 01:21 JonnyBNoHo wrote:On November 26 2013 21:14 stroggozzz wrote:On November 26 2013 19:17 mcc 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:
[quote]
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. Minor fluctuations of wealth in last 30 years are not what my post was concerned with, even if I agreed with you that real wages are good sole measure of prosperity when comparing different periods. And obviously my post was concerning modern first world countries, I hoped I would not have to spell that in full. Since we were discussing political system in US/West I thought it was clear. As for amount of democracy if you find some measure of it that you can quantify and compare different periods please show me how it declined. Claiming that western culture peaked in the enlightenment is exactly the lack of knowledge of the past that I was talking about. Enlightenment was important period, but science and philosophy was not like pop culture today. It was enjoyed by the privileged and wealthy and most of the population was living in conditions none today experienced. The rest is a rant not related to my post, as I specifically said things are not all perfect today, so I will ignore it. I was talking only about America and the western countries that have undergone very similar political changes. When i was talking about third world diseases, the ones such as Rheumatic fever, that didn't used to exist in the west, now does exist-at least in New Zealand. poverty has risen everywhere, i believe in America its something like 50million people going to bed hungry. Your right that real wages is not 100% reliable. government social spending has also been repeatedly cut as well. Families with 1 adult on min wage used to be able to survive, but now they cant. not everyone is poorer though. CEO's managed to increase their salaries from 30x the average person to over 300x the average persons income. You might argue that only the wealthy could enjoy philosophy and science in the enlightenment, but a historian-Jonathan Rose, wrote a good scholarly account of how 19th century British working class was full of 'proletarian autodidacts with a passionate pursuit of knowledge'. Dickens, Tolstoy, ect was all very popular at the time. todays culture is mostly driven on profits and seduction. The fact that tv shows will only enter the production phase if they are able to gain viewers already dramatically narrows the spectrum of mainstream culture that we will see. i think image based mediums are just very seductive. For example Cicero noted that the Colosseum drew the plebs attention away from political affairs. Poverty in the US is measured before government taxes and transfers. After, the poverty rate has been in steady decline: Link... and just about everyone has seen a real increase in income: If you want to bask in the good ol' days, look to Japan. Is that adjusted for inflation? Otherwise poverty has actually gotten quite a bit worse. Both charts use inflation adjusted figures. Okay, just making sure. Not that I doubted that poverty has gotten less in the US throughout the 21st century... and not only that, but any other measure of quality of life people care to dream up will show an improvement too. But that's a kind of pointless measure. I think if you look at quality of life in most areas of Africa or South America, you'll find that it has actually gone down. Argentina was actually one of the richest countries in the world at the turn of the 20th century. Africa was a mess already, but at least it didn't have the problems of rampant overpopulation it has to deal with now (same for large parts of Asia).
Yeah, Argentina's a mess. Health and income in most developing countries have been improving substantially though.
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quote]...some people continue to defend trickle-down theories which assume that economic growth, encouraged by a free market, will inevitably succeed in bringing about greater justice and inclusiveness in the world. This opinion, which has never been confirmed by the facts, expresses a crude and naïve trust in the goodness of those wielding economic power and in the sacralized workings of the prevailing economic system. Meanwhile, the excluded are still waiting. To sustain a lifestyle which excludes others, or to sustain enthusiasm for that selfish ideal, a globalization of indifference has developed. Almost without being aware of it, we end up being incapable of feeling compassion at the outcry of the poor, weeping for other people’s pain, and feeling a need to help them, as though all this were someone else’s responsibility and not our own. The culture of prosperity deadens us; we are thrilled if the market offers us something new to purchase; and in the meantime all those lives stunted for lack of opportunity seem a mere spectacle; they fail to move us.[/quote]
--Pope Francis
What a guy. Seems vaguely relevant to US politics.
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EPT
