hey everyone, just wanted to say thanks for the education I’ve received on this site & in the forums. I promise to contribute more to discussions once I’ve read enough to comment without provoking facepalms among the experienced.
I’m an expat, which means most people I meet tend to be free market, open border types (thanks to our higher-than-regular dealings with immigration, tax offices & multi-country bureaucracies). BUT… I still meet plenty who aren’t.
So, my question/request here is: I’m building a collection of fast, one-liner comebacks to common Socialist/Keynesian/Statist statements. The ones that make your eyes roll, but you know you can’t defeat without launching into history lessons, statistics and quotes from people the general public has never heard of.
Comebacks don’t have to be 100% accurate, just quick & effective. We’re not talking debates here, more like drunken conversation in a loud room with short attention spans. A good throwaway line to beat a bad one. Bad lines like:
“Thanks to free market capitalism, we have the Global Financial Crisis”
“I’ll take socialized medicine anyday over America’s broken system”
“OK, let’s compete freely – let’s all work for 50c an hour”
“You can live in an anarcho-capitalist utopia right now. Just go to Somalia”
“There should be a law against CEOs making multimillion dollar salaries”
“Like it or not, World War II got us out of the Great Depression. Big government spending equals prosperity”*
*That last one really kills me. I usually say something like “If you can only prosper by breaking things down, you’re a virus” or “Sure, if I flush all my money down the toilet I’ll have to work extra hard to make it back. Progress!”. Any suggestions for the other ones? (or any other comebacks to lines I didn’t write here?)
““OK, let’s compete freely – let’s all work for 50c an hour””
Counter: “Nobody would be stupid enough to work .50 cents an hour doing unless this consisted of only lifting a lever all day, & society would still expect a certain amount of subjective wages with or without minimum wage. Although, if I did have about 20 jobs daily that paid me .50 an hour per tasks like “clicking on ads”, “pulling a lever”, “chatting in a chat room ocassionally advocating a product”, “submitting art with a watermark sponsor”, etc. perhaps this wouldn’t be such a bad deal.”
Money Quote: I should be able to waste my time as I please, so if I’m not willing to do more than whatever $0.50 an hour entails, my poverty will be of my own design.
“Like it or not, World War II got us out of the Great Depression. Big government spending equals prosperity”
Counter: “The Military Industrial Complex is not the same as the economy. What happens when hyperinflation occurs? Do we send wheelbarrows full of flaming money at the enemy & conquer their lands with our pitchforks? I’m sure that when the economy crashes to overt regulatory burden, the military will be there to give up it’s budget in favor of helping out people eat, survive, & prevent further coerced profits from tax- oh wait. They won’t. They’ll just start another war instead of addressing the problem.”
You get the idea. Co-opt their own reasoning and quotes against them, You might need to pick up an english book or two though to get a grasp of the poetic turnarounds, though. Many already established libertarian thinkers should give a good amount of quotes to mine from, though.
“Thanks to free market capitalism, we have the Global Financial Crisis”
Thanks to the free market you, your friends and your family were alive to see what a government engineered Financial Crisis looks like.
“I’ll take socialized medicine anyday over America’s broken system”
oh, i think I saw a Southpark episode about that, you know??, where they have to choose between Douche and Turd ???
“You can live in an anarcho-capitalist utopia right now. Just go to Somalia”
hey, we can try majority rules social democracy if you’re game… HEY ALL YOU GUYS AT THE BAR WANT JOHNNY HERE TO BUY YOU DRINKS ALL NIGHT??? THROW YOUR HANDS IN THE AIR !!!
“There should be a law against CEOs making multimillion dollar salaries”
Hey, give inflation a chance! I’m sure the government can fully wreck the economy if you just give them a chance!
Big government spending equals prosperity"
Oh Rly? How well did that work out for the Soviets?
Because the federal reserve, fannie mai, and bailouts are all part of the free market.
The vast majority of americans make more than the minimum wage. Unemployment among young adults approaches 50% because the minimum wage makes low-productivity jobs illegal.
Somalia is better since state collapse. They actually have better and cheaper cell phone service than we do because there’s no government telecom cartel.
There should be a law against attacking innocent people just because they are in a corporation.
If the wartime theory of prosperity were true, we would have recovered DURING WWII. We cut government spending by 2/3rds after the troops got home, and THEN the economy took off…
Oh, I forgot. Sometimes people will just bring up arguments against you, and then switch topics as soon as you answer them. If this becomes apparent, cut them off:
“Look, do you think i’m stupid? You think I’ve never heard or considered your impromptu objections? Serious intellectuals subscribe to anarcho capitalism. You have never heard of Rothbard or Hoppe because you stay in your comfortable ideological cubby hole and chant your little liberal/conservative slogans to yourself. It is childish and pathetic to think you can dismiss an intellectual movement you have never heard of in a few pithy anecdotes.”
Most people don’t actually know why they repeat these slogans. They just take it in uncritically like most people out there.
The antidote is just, for each point, to ask them ‘Why’? They usually can’t answer. They stutter and stumble and then say something stupid. That’s when you pounce.
“We need state police to defend us against criminals”
I am more afraid of police than I am of criminals - at least I have the right to defend myself against criminals.
“Government is there to protect our rights!”
In order to protect our right to property government must steal from us.
“You can live in an anarcho-capitalist utopia right now. Just go to Somalia”
You can live in your state socialist utopia right now. Just go to North Korea.
“Like it or not, World War II got us out of the Great Depression. Big government spending equals prosperity”
(with russian accent) Hail comrade. USSR-style spending will make our nation paradise on earth. (due to recent developments Cuba may be even better example)
Some of these are purely emotional.
"What are the great faults of conversation?..
I will tell you what I have found spoil more good talks than anything else: long arguments on special points between people who differ on fundamental principles upon which these points depend. No men can have satisfactory relations with each other until they have agreed on certain ultimata of belief not to be disturbed in ordinary conversation, and unless they have sense enough to trace the secondary questions depending upon these ultimate beliefs to their source."
– Oliver Wendell Holmes