Does anyone have any examples of one-on-one debates that they really liked? On the topic of politics/economics of course.
The reason I’m asking is that I’m wondering if there has ever been a debate where there was one clear winner and one clear loser. Thus far, I haven’t found one…
Well if you’ve ever posted on the NationStates General forum, search for posts by a user called BAAWAKnights. He tore leftist arguments apart using minimal effort.
Mises.org has a couple of actual filmed debates in which Austrians beat down statists and/or leftists on many economic issues, especially privatization. My favorites are done by Walter Block.
I’ve had a few recently interesting debates with my usually leftist friends (after a few drinks of course, at parties). Typically, I tend to abstain from debates (offline) when they enter the realm of economics, since even though I understand enough to object, especially when they start spouting intervention nostalgia for the great depression, I don’t know enough intracate exmaples to make effective counters without digging myself into an argumentive hole.
However, the recent arguments have been more theoretical, and I’ve made quite the impression on them concerning post-statism, and I think they were quite receptive when I gave them my theory on how Marx may have been right on capitalism being a stepping-stone for another system, but wrong on it being Socialism. I essentially said superconductive capitalism in the vein of open-source movements, which, luckily, a few Linux fans there grabbed onto to let me finish.
But yes, I would say that was my favorite so far since I felt like I actually got some friends of mine to think differently, if only possibly in a passing manner.
Of course, we also had some crust-punks there do their usual anarchism spiel, but I sadly couldn’t take them seriously when I was attacked for mentioning that I read Ayn Rand on ocassion (not even books, yet; mainly excerpts & the wikipedia entries); so much for being open-minded. Oh well, offline debate is a hit & miss sometimes.
Other than that, I actually found some good arguments at Libertypapers; one in mind was an argument against someone who went by the handle “jim”, at this comment page (I also dipped my toe in the argument, but essentially was just fanning the flames of argument against his logic): http://www.thelibertypapers.org/2008/03/27/why-mike-gravel-is-not-a-libertarian/#comments. It ended with a post to the abridged, illustrated version of “Road To Serfdom”, which I thought was a bit funny, as well as nice preview for when I actually get to reading it myself…
And of course, Mises always offers good debates & conversations. I usually end up reading more of the forums than I do recommended reading, at least, for now :D.
Heh, that’s like CyberNations but without a war engine. The CN forums have a “Boiler Room” forum where political and economic debates often take place; there are even some libertarian alliances (I’m a founding member of the FCC), and we’ve got a “libertarian troll squad” (as one of our victims referred to us) going.
To the OP: There are quite a few I’ve enjoyed, but if I had to pick just one, I guess it’d be the one wherein I tried to defend an objectivist argument I’d heard in favor of nuking civilians. I didn’t actually think it was morally justifiable, but it was fun trying to prove that it was.
I used to play that game a lot. But stopped after I realized it was setup to reward socialist countries and punish libertarian ones.
Pretty much any “nation simulator” is going to be like that. The player is the state; if the game favored libertarianism, the player would be penalized simply for playing the game. I was actually working on creating a browser-based “nation simulator” last year that would be more realistic, but I gave up on it because of that problem. If instead of simulating nations, such games simulated individuals, then the player could employ either political or economic means to gain advantage and acheive their ends. That’s the approach I’ll take if I ever get the time and motivation to work on it again.
I don’t really get into debates in real life, since most people I know have no interest in politics or economics. And I grew tired of online debating quite quickly, since it is a fruitless pursuit, unless your aim is to improve your debating skills.
One particularly annoying aspect came up when I looked into Austrian economics more and started approaching economic debates from a more rational and less statistical side. It became apparent that 99% of leftists can’t argue specifics and have to rely on interpretations of statistics. For example, I recall one individual (who claimed to be an economist) that argued that taxation actually increases production, since people will work harder to achieve their desired living standard. Naturally, that argument has some mighty big holes in it and he quickly dismissed the whole debate when I brought them up.
From my online debating, I’m responsible at least in part for several (perhaps a few dozen) conversions (conservatives/liberals to at least minarchism, and minarchists to anarchism). I’m very good at debating, both online and offline, though. If you want to change how someone thinks, you need an “in”; you need some common ground to exploit. It also helps if you can take positions more extreme than your own actual positions, because that leaves room for compromise; give and take is often easier than just take; unfortunately for me, at this point my actual positions are about as extreme as is possible. You also don’t have to convert the person you’re actually debating; you can debate for the sake of convincing those watching the debate, without worrying about convincing the person you’re actually debating. I often have fun with that, by mixing trolling with rational debate; I’m pretty good at pissing people off for lulz while destroying their arguments. When I’m really bored or tired of engaging in the same debate over and over and over again, I’ll just stick to trolling people for lulz until I’m ready to engage in real debate again.
I’m relatively adept at influencing people, but I prefered to debate in forums with more ‘entrenched’ ideologues. It served my purposes better, which were to find my weaknesses and flaws.
Influencing people who have less intellectual investment in their beliefs is surprisingly easy. But you also have a problem with them in the sense that they are also easily influeced by the standard statist dogma coming from the media. So a conversion would have to very fundamental to make them process that information critically.
I agree completely with your point about debating for the audience.
I’m not going to change a control-freak-leftist’s mind, but I can make them look really bad.
I’m the opposite. I do convince some people, but I usually focus on denigration and defending my own ideas against their stupidity.
BFW89, I left the forum because the people who frequent it are hopeless socialists with few exceptions, and not very bright ones either.
You share roughly one third of the blame for my conversion with Shmuel and my own intellect holding the other two thirds. Didn’t know if you were aware of that.
FWIW, here’s one of the reasons I left that forum, Keep in mind that guy is a left-“anarchist”.
To be honest I like debating almost anything related to libertarianism. Be it economics, political philosophy, ethics, government policy (or lack thereof), or history. I think I just derive enjoyment from knowing I can use my limited knowledge and convince someone, or better yet, make them think in a way about a certain issue or point that they otherwises wouldnt have. THAT is what in my mind spreading the libertarian creed is all about.
And I was quite good at it, too. Unfortunately, NS was then (and still is) run by a horde of socialists who hated the fact that I simply didn’t care that they thought they could use “feelings” to support their garbage ideas. So I was banned. Permanently. Which is no big loss, really, and it isn’t my board, so that’s the way it goes.
Ah yes, I was also on that forum during the time you were posting. A socialist cesspool if there ever was one…
-Jon
I remember that there was a person who actually claimed that logic was a tool of oppression by European white males. I kid you not.
snicker