there is a lot of question dodging in there from Stefan, he keeps appealing to morality over and over, which if I was a lefty already, I wouldn’t be satisfied with. There is practically no econ theory other than the very general basics, and also almost no empiricial evidence. SM is good at going off the cuff and giving the basics, but those questions could have been answered even more emphatically, and on multiple levels. Its not like it was live or anything, he certainly could have taken some more time to do some proper research and put it on tape instead of saying things like ‘read DiLorenzo’ or that isn’t even worth a response.
And of course if Stewart would have been talking to an anarchist as opposed to a minarchist the questions would have gone in a different direction, becasue as Stewart points out, once you concede the ligitimacy of the state, you are just agruing about degree. Would love for someone to respond to his ‘surely you NEED the gov’t for SOMETHING’ with a ‘no, that is absolutely absurd’
That’s because that’s all he has. From what I’ve seen and heard, he doesn’t even really understand economics all that well, and even still it doesn’t even matter because there’s no way he could try to claim it was all his ideas anyway, so it would be useless to him. He’s nothing but a pretentious narcissist who claims he thinks IP is not valid, but nonetheless maintains his copyright monopolies and wants to pretend all the moral foundation crap he peddles is completely original (even though it’s not). (And I’m not the only one whosays so.)
He has to stick to moral arguments (and then try to maintain them through logical reasoning, as, of course he can’t be appealing to some supernatural being) because he can’t really make an economic argument. And it’s quite possible he can’t do that because he has no interest (and therefore no knowledge) of economics because he has a need to take credit as the originator of everything he says like some kind of balding Canadian Ayn Rand.
Cough cough, as Kinsella pointed out somewhere and quite few times, Copyright is very sticky. You can’t escape that in a statist society. So it’s more rational for him to use it rather than not to use it and get sued by the same government if someone happens to “copyright” his ideas etc.
In short, he doesn’t use physical violence against you. State (its mercenaries) does.
Um. No. Kinsella says copyright is sticky because you have it from the moment of creation (as opposed to having to apply for it…to “opt-in”, so to speak), and there’s essentially no clearly defined way to abolish your copyright.
That has absolutely nothing to do with “reserving all rights” (rights that Molyneux claims to believe are invalid and do not exist) on his published material. In case you haven’t noticed, everything the Mises Institute has legal copyright to is released under cc-by-3.0, which again, Kinsella himself has said essentially, in effect, removes the copyright monopoly and allows free use of material. (I’m not appealing to authority, I’m just pointing out that your own source says this).
So yes, Molyneux is still a complete narcissistic hypocrite.
I disagree with your Richard Dawkins assertion. Richard Dawkins view of the world has deep flaws whereas Woods is deeply consistent because he has done the research and reflection necessary to come to his veiw through logic. Dawkins’ view of god is an emotional response. Taking his view of no existence of God (i.e. something inherently undefinable) because there is no empirical evidence is just silly. He dismisses all the personal evidence of shamans, monks, priests, etc are delusions. It’s like saying there is no love because it’s not possible to prove it empirically! Of course if you have experienced either the define or love than you can actually compare your experience with someone else. Which is what people have done in both cases. That Dawkins hasn’t had that deep experience is just evidence of his limitations.
you completely missed the analagy there. Seems like you were blinded by a hatred of Dawkins. I wasn’t saying that Woods was an atheist (because he is very Catholic), I was comparing the manner in which he argues to Dawkins, who has been called “Darwin’s Rottweiler” Tom Woods is like Ron Paul’s Rottweiler.