I agree with this. I think those with less empathy are more naturally gravitated toward libertarianism than those with higher. I think if you study things enough, no matter what your motivation is with a few exceptions, you will converge on libertarianism. Unless you value purity or bullying others and such.

It didn't seem to work like that in practice. In the UK labour had to organise and fight for better pay and conditions.


That's irrelevant just look at what they were paid.

What happened to the 10 million odd Native American peoples ? Hitler was in awe of that genocide as he wondered how he could pull off something similar himself.

Here's a resdistribution idea. Figure out what poster is poorest have him or her make a website and have these discussions on off the rack forum software there.

That's what labour wants you to believe. Strangely, those without labour unions do just fine when they are able to have choices for employers and have skills.

You know what lead to better pay and conditions? Workers being able to accomplish more and opening up choices in employers.

And why is that a more appropriate comparison?

I would like 2 + 2 handed to the Euros now that the Americans can't play poker any more and have been reduced to discussing politics. We do not share the American obsession with bashing the weakest members of society. We accept that they have basic rights and help them. We don't call that communism we call it civilisation.

Ya but your replies have nothing to do with anything, you spell civilization weirdly, and I said make a rival site not steal this one, plus I was kidding I guess maybe you are too

Not if you look at per capita GDP by state. Norway 2010 per capita GDP of $96,591 is significantly greater than any state.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_GDP

In before Alex M scapegoats the governmentzzzz. I mean such crime stats are so flawed in general, who the hell would track such things? I know some random bum recorded it in his journal and therefore we take it as fact. Usually the low crime rates stats of the Wild West argument is used by the open carry lobby and it's fallacious. Many towns would not allow guns and some actually had harsher gun control laws then we have today.

Qatar has the highest GDP (PPP) per capita in the world. This is proof that absolute monarchy is the best form of government.

For realz, oil how does it work?

Rises to the top, obv.

The clue is in the name WILD West.

You might want to go to the start of the thread and see what started us down the road of comparing GDP's. We were only throwing cold water on the suggestion that Scandinavian countries had a poor GDP (which was untrue anyway) relative to the US because of their socialist policies.

Capitalists business owners always try to minimise their labour costs. They don't care about the workers. That's why the manufacturing and other work has gone to countries where the labour is disorganised. They can get away with paying them peanuts. In the UK the factory owners used to exploit the workers horribly despite the fact that Britain had an Empire. Everything the workers owned was fashioned out of mud because that is all they could afford.

Yeah, the "Wild" West was BEFORE the government moved in.

They try to maximize their profits, not minimize costs. Minimizing costs is one part. But if you can't hire anyone, you can't make much money.

As long as there is an employee being exploited, there is a competitor who would have an incentive to hire him away at a higher rate to increase his profits. But you sound like you subscribe to Anarcho-slavery, so any time someone is paid, it is exploitation.

The cheap labour is in the third world countries.

No I subscribe to a mixed economy which is run for the benefit of the people.

he said the stars get their kids into it, not that only stars' kids get in. At least look at the kids of stars not parents of stars.

Yes, but his larger point seemed to be that the film industry as a whole is not very meritocratic because of this nepotism. But the kids who benefit from nepotism make up a small percentage of the industry, hence it's not a strong case against its general meritocracy.

Not the first time I've felt you're barely in touch with reality. Possibly you didn't notice the enormous financial crisis caused by the very ideas you claim don't do any harm.

We also have conservatives and they're equally as wrong here.

The evidence does show free market capitalism provides the best outcome for society. I'm glad to see David admit that.

I don't know what percentage would change their mind if free markets made people slightly worse off from some other alternative but I would not. I would support capitalism because it is the most moral system. People voluntarily trade with each other without force from government.

I would support online poker even if it made society worse off. People voluntarily enter transactions.

Making everyone better off is a nice byproduct of free exchange not the reason for allowing it. And it just so happens that central planners never get the outcome they want.