Hiyoooooooooooooooo
I’m sorry to seem rash, but you’re simply confused. While Friedman opposed the Fed, he didn’t oppose central banking; in fact, he was for central banking. Friedman advocated the k-percent rule, which stated that the money supply should expand at a set rate between 3% and 6% annually. In order to carry out the k-percent rule, Friedman proposed a ‘robot’ central bank of sorts - a central bank not directed by men, but instead directed by the k-percent rule.
True. But I think we can add a numerate scale to this evaluation. I think if we do, we’ll find out that while Poptech and I may be statists, that we are nothing like Nancy Pelosi, particularly in terms of the range of issues we think should be under government control and to what degree we may think they should be under government control. In fact, Poptech and I may disagree on many of those issues as well. There is a numerate difference here which is not being fairly treated through literate evaluation.
Well that is a difference in degree, not in kind.
Also, LS, I don’t mean to insult or mischaracterize you, I’m just describing my perspective of your views. They seem very black and white to me.
And you have read what by him?
The difference in degree is enormous though.
But it is purely arbitrary in the sense that you have already given into the principle of it.
Well, that “arbitrary” difference makes a hell of a real difference.
Not really relative to the principle itself. Claiming that government has a right to use coercion in defense is in principle no different then claiming government has a right to use coercion in healthcare.
Then perhaps I need to better explain myself, although your paradigm is so narrow (exclusively the political sphere of ever expanding power at the expense of liberty) I can see how my views which support nearly everything outside your narrow paradigm, but nothing with in it, seem black and white.
The difference is I look at what lies beyond the state. And that is the market. And it is a massive paradigm that dwarfs the state in scope, both social and historical.
You’re worried about Nancy Pelosi. She’s a grain of sand on a beach, a fart in a hurricane. She’ll be gone before you know it, but you’ll have the same system, with someone else giving you the same pile of crap, bigger and smellier each time.
Until you can lift your head up,and see there is an entire paradigm outside the zero sum game of electoral politics, it’s bigger and bigger servings of crap for you.
I am trying like hell to inspire your imagination, by drawing attention to what a world where both parties in a transaction can win. That’s what I am about.
Except that the Constitution says the government can use coercion in defense but it doesn’t say so for healthcare. If healthcare was explicitly mentioned in the Constitution, I’d have much fewer problems with the healthcare proposal.
That’s nice. A piece of paper says that a government can do this or that and oddly enough this very piece of paper is interpreted by the very organization it seeks to limit. It’s not like the Constitution is stopping the current healthcare bill.
And I don’t think anyone here would disagree with that statement. I would also presume that everyone here would prefer to have you and PT as our overlords than Pelosi, Reid, and fee-fi-fo-bobama (unless we have a few starve-the-beast types here, in which case they really do prefer Pelosi-Reid-Obama). I’m late in this argument and haven’t read all of the back-and-forths, but from what I understand, LS’s point is that:
- You and PT are statists.
- Pelosi and her ilk are statists.
- As statists, all of you support the initiation of aggression which is necessary for the existence of the state, since, by definition, the state is a monopoly on force and in order to maintain that monopoly, it must initiate aggression.
- Since minarchists such as yourself support the initiation of aggression, there is really no place to stop the boundaries of the state. Why limit the state to “law and order” and “national defense” when you can “limit” it to roads, education, health care, welfare, and a national pension system?
Basically, whilst minarchists do have reasons to oppose state expansion beyond a certain point, they do not really have any logical consistency or rigor. The arguments minarchist use to support the state - e.g. the “free rider” problem, non-rivalrous and non-excludable goods, economies of scale - could easily be used to expand the state to its current size or much larger.
For example, do you support a state-run firefighter system? After all, there could be free rider problems associated with putting out fires: Person A could put out his neighbor’s fire because it threatened A’s property.
Do you support a state-run road system? After all, roads could benefit people who don’t pay for them, since they would bring business to previously cut-off areas.
Do you support a state-run education system? After all, firms that don’t use educated workers and individuals who are not educated benefit from the increased output of educated workers who work for other firms.
I could continue this all day: Do you support a state-run system of lighthouses and streetlights? Do you support a state-run system of education? Do you support a nationalized coal/auto/steel company? etc.
edit: this is me expanding on what I think LS’s argument is, based on the bits-and-pieces of this thread that I’ve read.
I’ve just realized, with the help of Thomas Sowell’s “A Conflict of Visions,” why I can never be an anarcho-capitalist. It’s the last part. “A world where both parties in a transaction can win.” See, I think the state and only the state can and does make those transactions possible. You think they happen despite the intervention of the state. This is a fundamental difference in views. It’s based on two different visions of human nature, I think.
I also find that I have a much harder time articulating these differences and nuances I see than you do articulating the principles.
That’s like saying that saying that a little bit of rape, when compared to a lot of rape, is not rape.
Well…it is. It’s stopping me from supporting the healthcare bill. But it doesn’t stop enough other people.
Yeah, and what I’m saying is I can tolerate a little bit of rape, because I see it an inevitable, whereas you say you cannot tolerate any amount of rape and to tolerate any amount of rape is to tolerate a lot. Which is a dichotomy I don’t accept.
Poptech, I am sick of your mocking tone. Contest your opponents’ ideas without trying to belittle them. I actually agree with you regarding the common definition of “libertarian” and Mises’ position on anarchism. But your snotty attitude and mocking barbs are disgusting and unacceptable.
And I’m entirely uninterested in your theories about the political philosophy of forum moderation. So save your breath.
It is not that you tolerate it. It is that you proclaim it justice.
There will always be rape. But it will never be justice.