I’m having a debate with people like this next week.
Can someone help me debunk some of the arguments the Revolution citoyenne makes, he kinda debated the wrong person.
http://unionrevolte.blogspot.com/2011/02/metaphysic-debate-with-redmond.html
You should break links so people have to paste it into the browser, otherwise they know where everyone is coming from.
I posted it, it requires moderator approval. I guess I’ll have to wait.
This is why I would rather live in a corporatocracy than be in a little kumbayaish syndicalist commune. These people would lead us like lemmings over a cliff into mass famine.
What we ask is that canadians have the SAME salary than Haitians. What we ask is that all humans on eart…h get the same gratification for they’re social work. What we want is to vanish the world’s capitalism domination. If we take all the richness that humanity create and divide it by the number of terrans, we could offer a salary of more than 1000$ per months to every of them! Women, men, childrens and old people, ALL OF THEM ON THE WHOLE EARTH. And you can be sure that this way, you would eliminate all of pauvrety and military campains since these comes from economic distabilisation.
Aaaaaand you forgot the bit about destroying any incentive to actually produce wealth in the short term. There’s a reason a brain surgeon gets more money than a person at McDonald’s. The service they provide is more valuable, so it makes every bit of sense for them to earn a higher wage. Then this zealot would more than likely retort with, “yeah more valuable…But only to the person getting the brain surgery and not to the collective!” Well boo-hoo, cry me a river. Different people have different needs and the only obligation they have to you is to not cause you any direct harm. Get over it.
What he is advocating is, “if you work hard, you ought to get more money.” This just doesn’t work, because again, when you judge the value of a product, you are judging the value of the product, not the amount of labor that went into the product. Of course, labor factors into the original price and I’m sure some people (like syndicalists) would shop places that don’t employ people in the 3rd world for whatever reason, but that just factors into the price of the product and is part of the demand curve. You can’t just pay people based on whims, this is the whole point of a monetary system and the price function.
But yeah, there wasn’t a lot of substance in my little rant, but I hope you can formulate an argument out of that gist .
I honestly have no idea how I can formulate a good argument for this debate without hurting my classmates feelings.
Last month I wrote a paper on child labor and why it’s good for “third world countries”, and my History teacher read it infront of the class and demonized me.
Give up. There’s no hope for this chap. Just link him to the Zeitgeist Movement / Venus Project and he’ll be happy as clam.
Z.
Give up. There’s no hope for this chap. Just link him to the Zeitgeist Movement / Venus Project and he’ll be happy as clam.
Really lol?!Almost all my classmates talk like him and act like him. They’re filled with slogans, which is something I’d expect from a religious fanatic who quotes the Bible. Literaly, all they do is quote the manifesto when the argument goes sour.
Is this normal behaivour?
No. Switch schools. Find different friends. Move.
Z.
Pretty much impossible. Almost all of Canadian youth think this way.
I guess I loose the debate the minute I step in classroom.
Just kidding, Drew. Relish being unique. Use logic ruthlessly and take no prisoners. And girls dig that, too.
Good work on your debate, btw.
Z.
O_o I didn’t debate that btw. That was some guy on facebook. He wasn’t very offensive with the socialist.
Also, It’s amazing how in the end the socialist has the last word, he also makes it look like he “won”. Even though his whole argument was sob story, morality, sweatshops evil, people in Thailand starve and everyone free.
The reason I got hold of it is because they enjoy making fun of Ludwig von Mises. I tried to explain to them that Mises institute is not just a cool Armory.
They continue to tell me that this association is funded by “evil capitalists”(oxymoron, according to them) who lust for profit.
I read a good chunk of it but some of the poor sentance structure started to grate on me so toward the end I was skimming and I apologize if this doesn’t apply. I personally like to go with a reductionalist approach to arguments like these. Ask a series of very basic questions that you know the other person will answer a certain way to then combine them all in a logical fashion and ask him which answer he wants to change and/or what is wrong with your conclusion from all of his answers.
An example of something along these lines (but unrelated to your economics argument) is http://micah-economics.blogspot.com/2009/02/is-government-taxation-morally.html
Another approach is to ask him what happens when the hard working people stop working hard because the no advantage to working hard? Also ask, why would someone take on a risky or difficult job if they get paid the same amount as someone who takes on a no-risk and/or easy job (police/brain surgeon vs secratery/accountant)?
If he tries to argue altruism you can point him in the direction of psychological research that (for the most part) disproves altruism.
@Spideynw : You say “otherwise they know where everyone is coming from.”. But what’s the problem? Are you afraid of public debates? I think that if Drew Brando wants some arguments “against the people like me”, i think the best thing is a REAL PUBLIC debate, here and now, dont you think? My english is not very good, but I hope this will not stop us in exchanging ideas…
@Eric080 : You say “These people would lead us like lemmings over a cliff into mass famine.”. I think you do not realize how mutch our theory is exactly what Adamn Smith and Ricardo wrote. We bring ballance to the economy and make REAL liberalism possible. We are the true liberalist, based on the LIBERTY of EACH terrans, not only a few of them. Not only the tiny economic’s elite. You say “the service they provide is more valuable”, but on what do you base this? According to your evaluation, you don’t seem to realize that the people that can make the “more valuable work” can because there are other people working into McDonalds or littering their stuff. These people can concentrate on the things you seem to qualify as “more important” because there are other people that take care of the things they should do if the division of work was different. You say “Different people have different needs”, but we do not deny this and this is exactly why we are favorable to the free market.
@z1235 : Ideologically, we are very far from the Zeitgeist Movement OR Venus Project, but I have to admit that we share similar causes.
@Micah71381 : Again, I am sorry for my bad english, I hope this will not stop us from debating.
Kindly, André Franc-Shi
http://unionrevolte.blogspot.com/2011/02/funny-debate-starting-with-some-people.html
I suppose if you provide actual reasons and not base your whole argument on “morality” a debate would certainly be possible.
Can you present your goal for “humanity”? Explain how your system is based on Adam Smith.
Drew,
Also, as most people from Quebec, I imagine you are a anarcho-syndicalit in the Bakunin-Chomskyte tradition.
Now if I understand correctly your whole system is based on the exploitation theory of the Marxian Labor Theory of Value. You suppose that a worker should be paid more then the entrepeneur(owner of the means of production).
Can you offer me an example of a Anarcho-collectivist society…besides Spain.
What are your thoughts on that?
Pretty much impossible. Almost all of Canadian youth think this way.
I guess I loose the debate the minute I step in classroom.
Never think this way, you keep speaking the truth and people WILL listen sooner or later.
Ideas are more powerful than armies.
Your english is far better than my french. 
It was actually more the internet ‘style’ that gets to me, with lots of “…” and “!!!” and “???”, not the actual grammer or language usage. Your text here is much more legible to me than on Facebook.
I think this discussion would benefit from breaking it down into a smaller theoretical scenario:
Let’s say you have an island with 3 people on it and on that island you have a manual on how to become a doctor, some resource that can be harvested (requires heavy labor) and converted into anything by using some magic factory (which requires a desk operator). We wil also suppose that any one person working at any one job will be more efficient than one person doing all of the jobs separately.
The problem with this scenario in a socialist system (equal pay for everyone) is that no one will want to be the doctor (requires a lot of up front work studying the manual before they can produce anything) and no one will want to be the harvester (very hard manual labor). All 3 people will want to do the desk operator job of running the magic factory. Sure, they can all do this job but they won’t get any resources and they won’t have anyone to treat them when they get sick or injured.
The solution to this problem is to pay each person differently. The laborer will get paid more than the desk worker because his work is harder. the desk worker will be paid the least because his job is easy and the doctor will get paid the most because he has to study without getting paid at all for a long time (perhaps he takes on a second job as a harvester while studying so he can feed himself).
The amount of processed magic resource (the currency on our island) that each gets paid will need to be adjusted until each job has equal appeal to the 3 members of the island. If the tradeoff between manual labor and an easy desk job is equal to the amount of payment then both jobs are equally appealing to the members of the island and therefor both will get done.
Never think this way, you keep speaking the truth and people WILL listen sooner or later.
Ideas are more powerful than armies.
I just did this expirement with my little sister. I offered her the book “In defence of global caiptalism” By Johann Norberg.
After which she called me and Norberg a “monster”.
She’s the type of person that likes movies like “Walmart” “Ouvrieres”(documentaries about “exploitation” of the worker)
I also doubt I’m going to get a response to my questions. It seems to me that the debate is over in the fellow’s eyes.
http://unionrevolte.blogspot.com/2011/02/funny-debate-starting-with-some-people.htm
Extrait from the link above:
I really don’t know why, but it seems that the people from the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada dont wish to debate ‘with people like us’. Here is a reply I post on the forum of the Ludwig von Mises Institute with the intention to provoke a larger debate. Here are some exchanges :
After which she called me and Norberg a “monster”.
Try asking her what makes you a monster. Keep asking her to refine her definition until you get to a point where there is clearly a logical falacy.