$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('careinke', 'P')reston,
How did you get so much smarter than your mother? Do you think all older people are stupid, or just your mother? Do you think you will become stupid when you get older?
Just wondering
PeakOil is You
Explain Libertarianism To My Mom
Re: Explain Libertarianism To My Mom
by PrestonSturges » Tue 28 Dec 2010, 14:39:15
Also, a lot of this is the Sarah Palin word salad syndrome. They are acustomed to not understanding a lot of modern things, so when someone reels off a bunch a gibberish and smiles, they are likely to believe it.
Luckily they are smart enough to not whoop like idiots whenever someone says "teleprompter" or whip out the checkbook when someone says "Jesus" or shouts "USA! USA!"
I could cite anumber of examples of people get very fixed ideas that are really just random combinations of words. But I like the Dilbert cartoon where the secretary tells the boss that the fax machine isn't working because he used all the fax paper sending faxes. That's the kind of thing that slips right past an older person.
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Re: Explain Libertarianism To My Mom
by PrestonSturges » Tue 28 Dec 2010, 14:54:03
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrestonSturges', 'S')ounds like limitless corruption and slavery to me. I'm not sure i want to live in a world where Paris Hilton and Carrot Top get to be Somali warlords because of all the "value" they create.
You mean like the limitless corruption and slavery, which the government you endorse brings us today in spades.
Back to the trust fund babies' version of marxist dialectics, do you mean the "limitless corruption" of the poor, and the "slavery" of the wealthy?
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Re: Explain Libertarianism To My Mom
by Oakley » Tue 28 Dec 2010, 15:05:23
$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('mos6507', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Oakley', '
')You think that because there is not some thug commanding us to follow his rules that there would not be order, peace, and progress.
')You think that because there is not some thug commanding us to follow his rules that there would not be order, peace, and progress.
I take it you'd have wanted to be in Baghdad following the fall of Saddam?
The problem with libertarianism is it assumes that people are moral creatures. They aren't. The same corruption that afflicts government is in the hearts of the thug that breaks your door down because the police have been disbanded. It's not the institution of government that's the problem. It's human nature.
I have noticed that children who are over controlled by their parents often go wild when they leave home, partly because when the control disappears they don't know how to control themselves. I think this is what happens on a societal level when people have been conditioned by a long period of suppression and are suddenly set free; they don't know how to deal with it. But just as most young people who leave a controlling home, eventually learn to live with freedom, so too do societies.
You are wrong about people being basically bad. People basically want to fulfill their needs, and given the opportunity to do will act in a civil manner. There have always been and will always be sociopathic personalities who will deviate from the norms of civilized society, but there are better ways to deal with these than government having a monopoly on the use of force. And, if you look at where present day ordinary crime comes from, it is from poverty; and poverty is the chief product manufactured by government as it rigs the economy for the benefit of the few at the expense of the many.
It is an abdication of personal responsibility and personal power to look to others to take care of you or to demand government give you advantages over competitors, not to mention the moral implications. So if government police, a relatively recent invention by the way, were to disappear, people would deal with the few deviants by cooperative efforts like neighborhood watches, learning to defend one's self, private security services, insurance, vigilantism, security systems, and whatever else human inventiveness brings. Government only stands in the way of effective security against deviants by taking a monopoly position in defense, even going so far as to disarm honest individuals with "gun control" and sometimes prosecuting those who use violence in self defense.
Why take second best when that is what government brings (example public schools vs. private schools) when free markets can do so much better?
"The deepest sin against the human mind is to believe things without evidence" Thomas H Huxley
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Yeah I could argue with him how this is just more of the same Bush-Cheney fascism but I don't have the energy for it and I'll never convince him of anything.