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	watch unemployment spread like a sickness. This is what happens when the central bank dumps money into the economy and screws up the capital investment signals just so their Wall Street friends can make a killing. (view post)	12/06/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: Well, it’s been fun playing tennis with a brick wall. Thank you for your concession. Strawmen will do that, you know. Feel free to get some intellectual integrity. I will say that you at least made an effort—right up until you got too close to your core beliefs. Then you pulled a Brave Sir Robin. (view post)	11/28/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: Did the government regulate that Wal-Mart close down the store? No, but the regulations wrt unions in Canada was such that Wal-Mart decided that it was better for Wal-Mart to not have the store there. So yes: the rules created by the government are the fault of the government. Dunatis Posted: Yet amazingly through the power of trade you can purchase the time of people who can then be equipped with guns who may do as you ask. Yes. Or you can hire a carpet cleaner who will clean the carpet as you ask. Fancy that. Hint: equating private police with mercs is beyond stupid. Dunatis Posted: This is true, except that when your options are between starving to death in a gutter, theft and working in a sweatshop Let me ask you this: were they starving to death BEFORE the factory arrived? I’ll answer that for you: why yes, yes they were. So the sweatshop offered what for them? Again, I’ll answer for you: a way for them to not starve. (view post)	11/27/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: You got me there, I was mistaken in thinking that you were at all relying on people not being complete bumholes to each other at least to some degree. I guess for some reason I thought you were arguing that anarchocapitalism would benefit everyone It does. They wouldn’t be working in the so-called sweatshop if they didn’t think it would benefit them. But you go on and believe that value is objective and precisely what YOU think value should be. After all: you get to rule over everyone, right? Y’see: you don’t get to determine what is of benefit to someone else. Dunatis Posted: Because people are known for stringently following the law at all times. The government doesn’t create coercive monopolies just through legal fiat. It takes enforcement of said laws for it to work at all and I’m saying it’s absurd to say that just because it’s not written down somewhere doesn’t mean it cannot in principle be enforced in the same way. And yet you still need a government for it. You cannot have a coercive monopoly without such. Dunatis Posted: How often do people here complain about being banned for something that isn’t a rule written down somewhere? I see no parallel here. Dunatis Posted: There is no special magical quality of influence that a government has that cannot be replicated through sheer financial power Yes there is. The power of trade is far different from the power of a gun. Dunatis Posted: No, they happen because a company does them Because of government regulations. (view post)	11/26/2009
	Let me game with opera You can tell Opera to mask the user-agent as Firefox. And then you don’t get the message anymore. Because, for some reason, there are apparently only 2 browsers: IE and FF. Even though there are more. And they work fine. Even better than the non-standards-compliant IE. (view post)	11/26/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: You may not be able to have legislation in place to create coercive monopoly, but to say that those are the only means by which a coercive monopoly could exist is rather absurd. No, it isn’t. You cannot completely prevent competition except via legal fiat. Dunatis Posted: Using the protective agency as an example, they would have some sort of violent means with which to establish protection from either outside forces or violent individuals within the area (Because of course everyone is free to own weapons, no matter how deranged, as long as they have money). The only thing stopping a large enough agency from creating a coercive monopoly would be their own conscience Not really. There’s this thing called “market forces”. Let’s look at restaurants. In the absence of anti-competition laws aka antitrust laws, McDonalds STILL would not be able to create a coercive monopoly, as it would not be able to force people to patronize McDonalds, no matter what. It’s no different from a private defense agency. Dunatis Posted: Organized crime groups will do this and their competition is the apparently horrendously corrupt state run police and of course other gangs. Obviously other gangs are a potential threat but for argument’s sake, let’s say that the company in question becomes rather large as they offered good deals for a long time and now pretty much own 80% of all protective services in the US. At this point they steal whatever employees from competing companies that they can while killing and threatening the rest until they own everything. And how does it do that? Remember: there will be people to stop them. The Hollywood nonsense of one company buying out all the other protection agencies is a load of fictitious nonsense. People would cancel their contracts and create their own agencies. Without the power of taxation, there’s nothing the large agency could do. Remember: if something supposedly bad applies to the market, it applies doubly so to the coercive monopoly known as government. Dunatis Posted: Your system relies very heavily on not only good people with a proper conscience No, it doesn’t. I realize that such is a common objection among those who take 0 time to think about it and who have been brainwashed by the state. But such isn’t my problem. As you do state: government is precisely the sort of entity which you are railing against wrt the market. So I fail to see how your objections are in any way valid. Dunatis Posted: Wal-Mart offers great savings and flourishes despite competition. But it does so by cutting corners in production costs at the expense of their workers. Overnight lock-ins, shutting down stores who try to unionize (Quebec), use of sweatshop labor overseas and strategic divvying of hours so that their employees don’t qualify for benefits. And yet these things happen because of government regulations. Further, there’s no such thing as stealing market share. There is no such thing as the right to any specific market share. As for sweatshops: nothing wrong with them. Organ-donation wait lists: I have never understood the idiotic reason that such should not be taken care of by market forces. (view post)	11/26/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: At which point who is deciding these liberties in the first place? There is no who. Liberty are actions you can rightfully take, and rights stem from self-ownership, which is basically a grundnorm justified by the fact that in discussion or even with acts of initiatory force, people are trying to convince the other or making implicit claims about what one does. If an action’s logical implications cannot be universalized (such as having a master/slave clbum), we must remove it from consideration, as there’s no reason other than might makes right behind it—and that’s no reason at all, just a bash to the skull. Anything which involves non-universalibility or performative contradictions necessarily can’t work. The short of it is that we are left with self-ownership as the remaining option. Dunatis Posted: And how would they be defended? Either personally or by an agency with whom you contract, in much the same was as you would hire a carpet cleaner or pest control. This of course puts to lie the Hollywood notion of “private police as mercenaries”, since clearly a pest control company isn’t a mercenary outfit. And without a government, you can’t get coercive monopolies. (view post)	11/25/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: And here is a question then for you. Is it a Right to be able to walk down the streets with your children secure in the knowledge that people dressed up in pretty white robes won’t shout at you about how you should go back to your country before throwing stones at you and trying to get others to join in? Only the not having stones thrown at you bit. The rest—-there is no such thing as the right to not be offended or have people make fun of you or call you names, etc. Once the stones fly, though, that is initiating force on the part of the stone-throwers and, as such, violates the rights of the first party. Dunatis Posted: A better example would probably the the Right to own property which is a rather fundamental part of Capitalism. But one which can limit where I am able to be. Yes. Dunatis Posted: I’m not at all allowed to walk into my neighbor’s house, make a sandwich and sit down to watch some television. My liberties are being taken away!!! No, you never had that liberty in the first place. You had the freedom, but not liberty. Liberty is free actions wrt rights. (view post)	11/24/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: And how pray tell would all of this work out in your mind? If profit hungry diamond cartels are socialist rather than capitalist, it would appear to me that you would connect any sort of power structure to a form of oppressive government yet capitalism would create a power structure An economic one, perhaps. But the difference between economic power and political power is the difference between trade and a gun. And those with more ambition and less morals are the ones we normally find in government (this is actually Hoppe’s Law). As for an organizational structure: we don’t need a government to distribute our food, do we? No. We seem to get fed quite well without a government doling out food to everyone. Consider that. Dunatis Posted: It would seem to me that as these financial powers battled amongst themselves in this power vacuum (since we have no government in this supposition to say “Hey Wal-mart, don’t send a tank to destroy the neighboring Superstore in order to steal their customers”Log in to see images!Only if you can’t think past the Hollywood nonsense. Once you do, you realize that wars are expensive and trade works better. Dunatis Posted: Admittedly slavery is not the right word to use for the lower clbum in the industrial revolution as they were not owned and treated as property (unless they were a minority). Instead they were treated as a commodity, a tool to be used while it worked then thrown out and replaced when it broke. No, not unless that was enforced by a government. And unions had almost nothing to do with better working conditions. The myth of unions as the savior of the worker is straight out of fiction. But people can unionize if they want; it’s not a socialist idea. Dunatis Posted: You say you will take liberty over slavery any day yet I live in Canada and am perfectly free to do as I choose. O RLY? You can spew whatever hate speech you want and the PC police won’t charge you? Oh wait—they will! You can pay for a private doctor to perform a procedure covered by your government health insurance and it’s fine? Oh wait—it’s illegal! Your rights are infringed, just as mine are. Dunatis Posted: You’re quick to call me wrong and while I admit right here and now that I am not infallible, I have yet to hear any real alternative beyond “government no, capitalism yes”. Letting people make their own choices. If you’re looking for specifics, you need to tell me precisely what you will have for breakfast on May 10, 2014. Once you realize that you don’t know because future conditions based on free will and desires are like that, you’ll understand that I can’t give you specifics. Further, specifics would show that we can plan such things—and we can’t. I also suggest that you look into DeBeers (THE diamond cartel) or OPEC (the C should stand for Cartel). Want to have a diamond mine in certain places? You have to be registered with DeBeers and get a license from the government. That’s just a fact. And it’s corporatist, which is a peculiar form of socialism. (view post)	11/23/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: How can that be any worse than coercive financial monopolies? Because it’s impossible to have a coercive monopoly without government fiat behind it. Dunatis Posted: At very least with a government there they can be slowed down in their bid to screw over the populace for their own gain. How’s that working out so far? Dunatis Posted: The industrial revolution was the closest we’ve ever really gotten to pure laissez faire capitalism, and the lower clbum were slaves. No, they weren’t. male reproductive organens is fiction for a reason. Dunatis Posted: Nowadays if you look at rebels in 3rd world countries who gain enough power to control and fight over diamond mines they are anarchocapitalists if anything. No, they aren’t. They’re tribal socialists. Dunatis Posted: The governments are in such turmoil that they can do nothing about these self contained military groups which finance themselves through such fun things as blood diamonds. Were it not for the government-backed DeBeers cartel, I think we’d see the end of such things. I’ll take liberty over slavery any day. (view post)	11/23/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler If you don’t trust capitalism without a government, how can you trust a government? Governments are coercive expropriating territorial monopolies. How can that be anything but bad? (view post)	11/23/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: Therein lies the problem, or rather where the legal system comes in. We all agree on actions which are considered to be violation of our privileges and those who violate those of others have their own revoked in such a manner as to prevent them from being able to infringe on others. I don’t buy into that line of thought, though, save for something like banishment. I’m of the restitution line. Dunatis Posted: My contention is that by calling it a Right, people get it into their heads that nothing can be done to have it removed. As we infringe on the rights of criminals in order to protect the Rights of others can we really call them Rights in the first place? I’m an anarchocapitalist, so my answer isn’t going to be what you might expect. My answer is that 1. Just because rights can be violated doesn’t mean they don’t exist qua concepts and 2. We shouldn’t have a government to be doing such in the first place. (view post)	11/22/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: Personally I disagree with the concept of human Rights in the sense that they cannot ever be removed. They should be considered privileges that can be revoked. I have the privilege to walk outside but when I go bumaulting people, I lose that privilege. Revoked…by whom? If they can be revoked, who gives them in the first place (unless you’re just speaking metaphorically). You never lose your rights; you can just have them violated. You can also incur a debt to others. agrees with a portion of the rest of your post (view post)	11/22/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Veer Posted: This thread is the gift that keeps on giving. And any ideal society demands respect for human beings: even from a rational self-interested point of view, society as a whole would prosper better and be more self-sustaining in a truly egalitarian society. Only in the sense that we all have the same rights. (view post)	11/20/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: Not everyone can have everything so scarcity of non-essentials is a fact Scarcity period is a fact. And there are no needs; there are only higher- and lower-order wants/desires. Value is subjective, not objective. Dunatis Posted: Capitalism is not the closest thing to a perfect communist state Perfection is a Platonic anti-concept, and communism is inherently unworkable for a “society”. Dunatis Posted: (which I agree is not likely to ever happen in any reasonable timeframe) it is the complete opposite. Socialism is the closest thing we have so far since Communism runs off of a desire for the wellbeing of the State How disgusting of it! The state is a coercive expropriating territorial monopoly, and to care for the well-being of that is to care for theft and all sorts of other rights-violations. No thanks. Dunatis Posted: which of course includes all of its inhabitants, while Capitalism cares only for the wellbeing of the individual By that I gather you mean individual atomism, which is a strawman. Further, the industrial revolution which you disdain was part of what brought a mbumive increase in the standard of living for people. The introduction of communism has always regressed the standard of living. Dunatis Posted: And as for money being a standardized replacement of the barter system. Of course it is, but the barter system itself relied on that motivation to work No, it relies on the fact that humans have desires and seek to sate those desires in various ways, one of which is trade. Econ: learn it. (view post)	11/20/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler No, the supposed ideal is a peculiar instance of the Nirvana Fallacy. (view post)	11/19/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Hobart Bliggity Posted: If you’re talking truly “ideal” in the sense most people in this thread are talking, there is no need for exchange. Right, because there would be no lifeforms which have desires and will, and there would be no scarcity. So we can simply dispense with that counterfactual posit, as we do have desires and will. And there will always be scarcity. (view post)	11/19/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Master_Troll Posted: I recall reading something about money is essentially debt, but not necessarily debt in the way you think it. No, it’s not even that. It’s an exchange-facilitator. (view post)	11/19/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler Dunatis Posted: WARNING!!! Log in to see images! ahead!!! If you’re gong to start talking ideal society, I think your number one mistake is bumuming that money should even exist. Money is an artificial creation meant to give us motivation to work No, money is a common medium of exchange used to eliminate the double-coincidence of wants which is such a problem in barter. As we have wants and will trade to sate those wants, it simply is easier to have a common medium of exchange, isn’t it? On The Origins of Money by Carl Menger (view post)	11/19/2009
	ayn rand is worse than Hitler spacekadt Posted: I’ve been sitting on my comments for a few days because they were pretty rage filled for a while. So, say someone has Aspbergers or Autism, for instance… they’re functional, but they’re never going to be rich without someone handing them a ****load of money. They didn’t earn it. So they’re just better off dead? These “CLODS” don’t deserve the chance to do something with their lives, even if it’s just bringing a smile to their parents’ faces? If people want to donate or whatever, that’s fine. But the problem is that too many people take the “Gee, it would really be nice if” to the level of “Government should make people give!” That’s called conspiracy to commit theft, actually. (view post)	11/19/2009

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