The Libertarians Are Coming

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Teahive
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Teahive »

Diogenes wrote:You invoke "Precrime" because you are really stuck on favoring that "anything goes in the bedroom" opinion you have developed. It doesn't take a great powers of prognostication to realize that creating fatherless children is a recipe for social deconstruction.

The problem with Libertarians is that they cannot fathom a scope of consequences beyond the immediate. Their minds can't, or won't follow a chain of causality past one or two iterations.
Won't. The "chain" of causality is actually a tree, and after several iterations the influence of a single decision has been diluted so much that it makes no sense to call it the cause of all that came after.

I invoke precrime because you want to use government power against individuals based on some vague predictions that their actions may or may not be part of a chain/tree of causality that ends in harm at some point in the future. I say, assign responsibility near actual crime.

TDPerk
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by TDPerk »

It's figurative speech, not literal; you moron. Seriously Perky, you need to go back and finish high school.
Or maybe read the rest of the post where I state in very specific terms what you're ignoring?
GIThruster, what you pretend is real is of no consequence to me, and there are few things in life I am more certain of, than that I am better educated than you are.

There is nothing about permitting people to act as they mutally see fit in their own bedroom, which makes legal or illegal what is done in a public place.
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria

TDPerk
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by TDPerk »

Diogenes, there's nothing in Libertarianism which makes it ok to father children you don't support.

Where do you get this crap from anyway?
molon labe
montani semper liberi
para fides paternae patria

Teahive
Posts: 362
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Teahive »

Diogenes wrote:The only way to test Atheism as a moral system [...]
There is no such test because atheism is not a system of morality, in the same way theism isn't.
There are various atheistic moral systems, just as there are theistic moral systems.

Western atheists are mostly infused with Christian morality – So what? Christianity has no copyright on those teachings. Everything is a Remix applies to moral systems, too.


Any stable society requires sufficient common ground between the dominant moral matrices, and either sufficient tolerance or sufficient force to bridge the differences between them (where force will generally lead to worse outcomes and more instability).

GIThruster
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by GIThruster »

TDPerk wrote:There is nothing about permitting people to act as they mutally see fit in their own bedroom, which makes legal or illegal what is done in a public place.
See until now, I had used the principle of charity and expected the reason you can't think past the level of elementary school kid was the shabby education you've been victimized with. Here in NJ people don't move past the 5th grade until they demonstrate they can understand the printed page. I'm sure it's different in VA, but they ought to teach reading comprehension, even in hillbilly country. What do they teach the kids these days?

As I said: "It's common for people to phrase their rhetoric around what happens privately, but we all know decisions about what is legal privately instantly effect what happens publicly. Relaxing or removing laws against sodomy back in the 70's was what caused the Gay Pride movement to get in people's faces and truly set the LGBT community back 20 years. Relaxing laws against beastiality in Europe caused those laws to be replaced by stricter laws than those they had had originally. It's never a case of restricting behavior in the bedroom. People who do illegal things in the bedroom (or the barn) seldom get caught. The laws restrict people celebrating illegal activity. So we do have people abducting and enslaving others for sexual reasons, but they don't celebrate this publicly so it remains a tiny fraction of people whom otherwise might have an interest."

Note that no one said what you're are here above misrepresenting me to have said, as that would be an obviously and stupidly wrong thing to say. And maybe that's as much as your small brain can handle? Do you need to reduce the positions of others down to their childish version in order to wrap your tiny brain around them? Okay, then in order to avoid the reductionist fallacy, lets say this again in very certain terms so you can write it down and try to memorize it.

Laws do not stop private activity. Laws stop public celebration of proscribed behavior.

Now Perky, do you need someone here to look up what "proscribed" means? We had that in 5th grade too. Point is, your pathetic and idiotic statement about the bedroom has nothing whatsoever to do with real life situations, the law, nor what libertarianism is as odds with the world about.
Last edited by GIThruster on Mon Dec 09, 2013 1:08 pm, edited 1 time in total.
"Courage is not just a virtue, but the form of every virtue at the testing point." C. S. Lewis

hanelyp
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by hanelyp »

Re: "limited government can't work",

- The US Constitution is, as with any law of man, only as strong as those who stand to defend it. When a critical mass of the electorate choose to ignore it, it falls. Further, the US Constitution was drafted with the intent of governing as moral people. Morality in the US is crumbling.

- Observers in touch with reality have learned a few things watching the politics of the last 200+ years. I've personally observed:

-- A 2 party system is near impossible to avoid with plurality elections, and a 2 party system is not good in general. Plurality elections are the worst of the simple and 'fair' means of election.

-- When you have stable government for an extended period and repealing law is as difficult as passing it in the first place, extraneous law piles up. Necessary law will have little difficulty finding votes if it comes up for renewal. Alternately, allow a lesser portion of the legislature repeal bad law.

-- Granting the vote, with power to tax and spend, to people who are net drains on the public treasury is proving a disaster. I see no path to reverse this short of civil war.
--- A plebiscite with power to repeal law but no power to tax, spend or regulate, may be a reasonable compromise of interests.

Presuming intelligent and moral people take charge rebuilding after the Burning, some of these lessons can be incorporated into the new constitution.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

paperburn1
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by paperburn1 »

Good video on how we ended up with a two party system.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7tWHJfhiyo
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

paperburn1
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by paperburn1 »

And here is a solution but those in charge will never let it happen
http://www.youtube.com/watch?annotation ... Y3jE3B8HsE
I am not a nuclear physicist, but play one on the internet.

Betruger
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Betruger »

Diogenes wrote:
MSimon wrote: So how can a people be moral without religion? You ought to ponder that question.
diogenes wrote: Have pondered it quite a lot and for a very long time. The answer keeps coming back that they can't.
Betruger wrote:Horsepucky. I'm not religious and I watch things slip my grasp daily because one way or another it'd be unfair for me to take them. I mean mostly non-material things. Slacking off at work because no one would tell the difference or because everyone else is slackin. Paying with my time for others' well-being, for absolutely zero benefit to me besides a clear conscience. In fact it often gets to the point where I wonder if it really is worth it.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3116678.stm

Did you overlook, or deliberately ignore my point that the morality of modern day atheists is the byproduct of the Ocean of Christianity surrounding them?
ME. Not atheists.
*YOU* cannot be an example of an atheist having morality because you cannot separate the influence of Christianity from your moral decision making process. You are contaminated, tainted, infused with Christian doctrine/practice whether you realize it or not.
Good demonstration of your presumptuousness. You can get to morality with pure reason. And in my case one very selfish path within reason's territory. What goes around comes around; etc.
TLDR You don't know who or what I am.
Diogenes wrote:
Betruger wrote:
Monkeys
There is an inherent tendency towards fairness with the members of one's own tribe, but it does not extend to others outside of this group. The notion that we should have concern for others outside of our own little gene pool is the consequence of Christian teachings. This can be learned, but it is not inherent.

Take a look at how monkeys behave toward each other when they are from different tribes.
Monkeys of other tribes.. Counter-balance, maybe, the "fair" monkeys, but don't nullify them: You said that there cannot be morality (or fairness? cant be arsed to doublecheck sorry) without religion.
You can do anything you want with laws except make Americans obey them. | What I want to do is to look up S. . . . I call him the Schadenfreudean Man.

Diogenes
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Diogenes »

GIThruster wrote:
Rousseau



My mind has gone down some of the same lines of thought as Rousseau. I have long considered that there must be a set of principles upon which the vast majority must agree in order to have a functional system. Widespread deviation from the norm cannot be tolerated on some issues, such as murder or theft, or the system cannot be sustained.


One of the difficulties attending to deep thinking on social philosophy is that there are so many branches to follow, and assumptions to make regarding the likely consequence of applying the branching principle. The way a body of people may react to something is not always as predictable as it might seem prior to the fact.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Diogenes »

kunkmiester wrote:
I read your comment several times in an effort to understand it. I failed.
Let me try, I've been thinking on it a few days. Looks like the thread has gotten ahead of me though.

You cannot do a "limited" government. It's the very nature of government to expand and increase until it's a total tyranny, or is overthrown. That's been proven out for all sorts of government all over the world ruling all sorts of people.

You certainly cannot do limited government when people keep removing the limits. Several Amendments have loosened the restraints originally placed on government, and the worst among them is the amendment eliminating the necessity to pay taxes in order to vote. If anything killed the nation, that was it. You will note that the unrestrained spending sprees started just afterward.


kunkmiester wrote: We're heading for a revolution. It'll happen, it's one of those things that's hard to put a good timeline on. After that revolution, people will try again to put together an enlightened government that truly serves the people (and not just the people in charge). The Constitution will be rewritten, with supposedly more and better bonds and limits to keep the government under control. It won't work. Government expands to tyranny or destruction, so in time, perhaps more time that we gave or perhaps less, it'll lead to another revolution.

Perhaps, but hopefully so far off into the future that it won't trouble us or even our grandchildren's grandchildren further. We can do no better than this.


kunkmiester wrote: To expand a bit, I feel that the growing speed of information will limit the time needed for the next cycle. The Romans had writing, the Founding Fathers had print, we have the internet. We will have the ability to see the descent into tyranny happen much sooner, understand where it's going much faster, and see the bonds breaking. That revolution will happen faster and then of course, being accustomed to the government, will place even more limits on it. Logical right? Rinse repeat.

Have you noticed my "Skynet is coming" thread? I've been suggesting for quite some time that technology is going to make dissident suppression dramatically easier in the future. We won't have machine overlords though. If it's any comfort, we will have evil humans at the command center of all those killing machines. It's just the same old tyranny with a new modern high-tech twist.






kunkmiester wrote:
At the end of history, we will be teaching our children how sad it was it took so much time and blood to understand the true nature of government and get rid of it all together. I don't know exactly what kind of social order they will live in, but it won't have a government, since people will get used to living without it looking over their shoulders, and it will become so dangerous but irrelevant that the government workers will just stop coming to work.

Wishful thinking. Not having a government is impossible. Whoever fancies himself as a bad-ass will always set one up. It starts out as robbery and extortion, but it eventually translates into crime bosses defending their turf, and the next thing you know, the meanest son-of-a-bitch becomes King.


It's like making a hole in water. It will last till the surrounding water pushes back in.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Diogenes »

williatw wrote:
And therein lies the problem with someone like Dawkins. Their stubborn refusal to acknowledge the irrational impulses that drive human beings, his refusal to see that most people are not as rational as he thinks he is. Lennox tried to point that out in mentioning Stalin, Pol Pot, and Hitler, but Dawkins response is well they weren't necessarily atheist, and even if they were it’s beside the point because most atheist aren't like them. Yes the threat of the big bad daddy in the sky will punish you in the end if you mess up, even if no person manages to, is the basis for our laws/morals. The rise of Nazism, Communism, Fascism, etc. is the result of telling the masses that there is no afterlife, no big daddy in the sky who will ultimately hold you to account if you screw-up. The emotion based need in people to believe in something merely defaults to ideology, if there is no religion. Sure you would probably love you mother, father, sibs, relatives anyway, and to a progressively lesser degree those around you in order of your closeness to them, but when it comes to the "other" that isn't of your "tribe" Katie bar the door. I do not find Dawkins explanation for the orderliness of the Universe we live in and the way the rules/conditions seem to be setup to make life possible satisfying either. There are supposedly and infinite (or very large) no. of "multiverses" where everything is screwed-up and we just hit the winning lottery ticket universe so to speak. The fact that there is no evidence of these other universes is beside the point; it is the lesser extraordinary claim then that of a creator. If atheists like him succeed in getting rid of Judeo-Christian religion, it will either default to one of the above "ism's" or some virulent religion like Muslim extremism...love to see how someone like Dawkins would fare under the gentle rule of the Caliph.

Well stated.


Atheists are forever forgetting that many humans simply aren't rational. I have, on numerous occasions, mentioned the joy I would express the day on which atheists were confronted by Islamists. I would chortle gleefully if I could but watch them trying to argue humanism with someone holding a knife.


Atheism is like a monostable multivibrator. It cannot exist for long in the Atheism state before it reverts back to the normal religious ground state.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

Diogenes
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by Diogenes »

Teahive wrote:
Diogenes wrote:You invoke "Precrime" because you are really stuck on favoring that "anything goes in the bedroom" opinion you have developed. It doesn't take a great powers of prognostication to realize that creating fatherless children is a recipe for social deconstruction.

The problem with Libertarians is that they cannot fathom a scope of consequences beyond the immediate. Their minds can't, or won't follow a chain of causality past one or two iterations.
Won't. The "chain" of causality is actually a tree, and after several iterations the influence of a single decision has been diluted so much that it makes no sense to call it the cause of all that came after.

Oh yes. Having bastard children outside of marriage has a huge number of likely outcomes, and it is completely unpredictable as to what will happen to them. Absolutely unpredictable.




Teahive wrote:
I invoke precrime because you want to use government power against individuals based on some vague predictions that their actions may or may not be part of a chain/tree of causality that ends in harm at some point in the future. I say, assign responsibility near actual crime.

"Vague"? That bastard Children will grow up and commit crimes is a "vague" prediction?


Image


Image


Now when did that "Great Society" program start again? 1964? 10 years later we have a massive crime spike? Who coulda seen THAT coming? Yeah, it was completely UNPREDICTABLE.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —

MSimon
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by MSimon »

Did you notice D that the ills you illustrate directly correlates with the explosion of the prison population? You will note that the California Prison Guard Union agitates for longer and harsher sentences especially for Drug "Crimes" because it is in their financial interest. As it is in the interest of police everywhere. Despite that interest Prohibition is coming to an end.

Why? Well you can't solve a medical problem with police. And the main medical problem pot solves is PTSD. We have ample experience with that starting with the Vietnam War and its aftermath. Besides War, child abuse is the other main cause of the explosion of cannabis use. And how do you get more child abuse? Destroyed families and step fathers.

Now who got the Drug War started as an issue? Nixon. And who put it on steroids? Reagan.

What we are seeing is a system of "morality" destroying the morality it claims to uphold. And we saw it before with alcohol prohibition. We humans seem to have a LOT of trouble learning from the obvious.

What you are doing is pouring gasoline on a fire you claim to be extinguishing. Socialism does that.

The Drug War as a Socialist Enterprise by Milton Friedman

Here is a more obvious example without so much emotional baggage. The Black Market for tobacco.

I have seen estimates that claim that the Black Market is 20% to 40% of Urban economies.

This link says it is 10% of the total US economy: http://www.csub.edu/kej/documents/econo ... -11-28.pdf
Estimates are that underground activity last year totaled as much as $2 trillion, according to a study by Edgar Feige, an economist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

That's double the amount in 2009, according to a study by Friedrich Schneider, a professor at Johannes Kepler University in Linz, Austria. The study said the shadow economy amounts to nearly 8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product.

Much of that money goes into cash registers, said Gonzalez, as personal consumption has risen since the recession.

"There is consumer spending in the short term, with people having money even if it's not reported, and that's boosting the economy," she said. "But in the long run, an underground economy is telling us that things have to change."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100668336
2/15.7=~13%
Engineering is the art of making what you want from what you can get at a profit.

hanelyp
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Re: The Libertarians Are Coming

Post by hanelyp »

Crime has a correlation with the breakdown of the family lagging by 10 years or so, the time it takes a child to become an independent actor. Prison population should tend to follow crime by the short time it takes to investigate and prosecute. If the social problems associated with broken homes lagged an upsurge in imprisonment rates by 10 years, MSimon would have a stronger case.
The daylight is uncomfortably bright for eyes so long in the dark.

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