I am happy to pretend at expertise while presenting the latest fascist intel, as long as I can dodge the flying mud. b_b, why did you have to link to that comment? I was liking shiranaihito up until I saw that. At least I learned something constructive I can do. I pledge, every day, to frown so hard upon racism. Won't you join me?
Feel free to tell me how anything I said there is inaccurate. Though I suspect you've got a certain condition in common with yellowoftops and b_b.. :pI was liking shiranaihito up until I saw that.
This was the sentence I found most egregious: Lots of awful things are frowned upon hard; that doesn't make them no longer a "factor" in causing harm. Otherwise, I liked what you had to say about wealth, the virtuous cycle of saving, and questioning pat answers about "sitting on money." b_b and I do share a habit of talking past each other and sometimes refusing to acknowledge when the other side makes good points. He's a commie, but he means well, and he rarely spouts absolute nonsense. yellowoftops appears to have sympathy for my fascist (?) tendencies.In reality, in the US for example, racism against black people is frowned upon so hard, that it's really not a factor in why they're not successful.
Do you think I was suggesting that the frowning itself somehow makes racism not a factor, instead of say, its effects on (racist) people's behaviour? Besides, very few white people are actually racist, so their effect is marginal anyway. I'm afraid to ask about your "fascist tendencies".. :pLots of awful things are frowned upon hard; that doesn't make them no longer a "factor" in causing harm.
Everybody's got their thing. There are parts of the Libertarian community that I fervently dislike, and one of them is that some (hopefully a very vocal very few) people think that the legal permission to do things is equivalent to moral permission. I had to leave r/Libertarian because I got down-voted when I called out someone for being racist. That's not a group I would associate with. I fear that the online Libertarian community is a bunch of do-nothing extremists who are going to ruin my party. We don't have the numbers to afford bad first impressions.
That seems a bit self-defeating for someone who advocates against imposing legislation on people. If legislation makes people moral, we should wish for more legislation. A more nuanced view is that trying to discourage immoral behavior with legislation can do more harm than good. Simply holding racist views is not illegal anyway. The do-nothing extremist is my favorite kind of extremist.legal permission to do things is equivalent to moral permission
Have you ever come across Helvetius? From what I understand (and I'm by no means an authority here), his basic political philosophy was that law can make people moral fundamentally, and not just make them act moral. It's an interesting philosophy, and his writings were very influential on Marx. Of course, we saw empirically in the 20th c. how misguided Marx's interpretation of Helvetius turned out to be. Can good laws fundamentally change our moral makeup? Certainly some religious people listen to their spiritual 'laws' and act (and feel) in ways that they see conforming to the rules. (For example, some religions mandate that their members tithe, and many of these members are happy to do it, because they see it as a moral imperative.) Could the government, if benevolent in its will, have a similar effect? My gut says likely not, because we don't view the government as an eternal force like a religious person might their authority, but rather we see the government as a useful institution that only is there to serve our interests (and rightly so). Perhaps that is why communist regimes always need a personality cult, to convince the people that they serve the government on not the other way around.If legislation makes people moral, we should wish for more legislation.
What you said there is literally why I am a Libertarian. The machine will be perverted, and it is my best interest to give it the least power to do damage when it is perverted enough to do so. But like fire can burn and warm you, government can do good things as well. The second part is often forgotten by Libertarians in exclusive pursuit of the first. They too have the Politician's Syllogism in their process, but backwards. Bad things have been done.
The doer has grown in power.
New things will be worse.My concern is that many commentators (and my fellow armchair commenters) advocate measures to correct the inequality problem using the same tool that Mr. Carson shows us is largely responsible for creating the problem. In order to pursue a political solution to the problem, concentrated political power is needed to effect the change. This power has been the source of the greatest harms ever caused by humans. Empowering an agency with resources and authority and a mission entails risk that the resources will be misused and the mission perverted.
I see. Perhaps I can get you to reconsider. It would be stupid to claim that government investment produces no benefits. I have found that the dialog is more constructive when framed as "better or worse" than "good or bad." Is government the only way to get the thing we want? If not, is any alternative better, when we consider both costs and benefits? Sorry for all the self-promotion, but it looks like you took a long nap and missed some of my best work.What you said there is literally why I am a Libertarian.
government can do good things as well
How is government a way to get what we, its subjects, want?Is government the only way to get the thing we want?
The usual answer is that you want to be able to get from point A to point B. For some reason you and your neighbors can't figure out how to lay asphalt, so you sign some invisible contract and people take money out of your paycheck and build roads and nuclear submarines with it, and now you can drive around.
Yeah. So I guess you're a Libertarian of sorts then?
I think we're actually already on the same page. What I said before is that Libertarians want to limit the government so it can do the least harm, but in pursuit of that goal you must temper your zeal with the truth that government can do good. In the same extremist view that would produce that "Libertarian Paradise" we could extend the Rupublican Paradise nightmare to include Abortion Death Penalty and Gay Compassion Camps where the impure are forced into hard labor to think about sin. Then you'd have the Democrat Paradise where we don't spend as much as possible on making all people equal leaving us poor but full of love and hugs. There's no such thing as a Libertarian paradise that doesn't include compromise with everyone else. And though your post is a very cynical view of Libertarianism, we can assume that it would be impossible to actually have that come to fruition in the current system.