POG Politics Thread

[lastchance]

But if you steal my property, that is clearly morally wrong. I just don't see it as any different if you call yourself a government and then steal 30% of it. The consequences for resisting government are ultimate. If I don't pay my taxes I will get letters, then knocks on my door, then eventually people with guns will come to take me away to prison. If I defend myself they will kill me.

You can easily resist government and not get shot. Pack up and hide. People do find ways to not pay taxes and not go to jail. Maybe I'm just spewing complete BS, because I have not done this or know anyone who has, but I don't think it would be that difficult to dodge the IRS if you spent the effort required to change your name/move, etc, etc.

Of course, there will be consequences for the above actions. I'm not saying it's correct or even reasonable for most people. But it is not all that different from the things we do everyday to please others. I wish I could make a complete mess of things and not have to clean my room ever, but that isn't happening.

Under your philosophy, it would be morally wrong for one to steal $10 from you right now and give you $1000 a day from now as compensation, but personally, I wouldn't mind, and I don't think most would.

Of course, government is probably not so efficient or effective, but some services may be so essential that the above analogy works. And if it does, well, would you not want even more money to be taken out of your pocket?

Monetary benefit is obviously not the only thing that matters. Privacy and freedom also matter, but these things are tradeable, and so one should find ways to trade one for the other to one's benefit.

[amplify]

I also don't know why I spend so much time thinking about freedom when I don't believe in free will. I guess that's one of them paradox type things.

[fnord_too]

My whole stance on most of the majorly less government arguments is that most of the case for them does not hold up in modern day. 250 years ago, absolutely, but not so much now. Take property tax, for instance. There is a very good reason for property tax and that is that land is non creatable, but people are growing exponentially. Without some way of forcing property back into the common pool, it will get locked up by smaller and smaller percentages of the population. Sure, you could just have extremely stiff inheritance and gift tax, and still heavily tax corporate property (so you don't just replace people who do die with corporations who don't have to), but then you are just replacing the mechanism (which is fine, my point is that there needs to be that recycling mechanism in place).

If you want to see a good example of what you don't want, look at Pakistan where I believe the vast majority of the land is held by an extremely small aristocracy. (Note: I did not research this, so I could be dead wrong. Going by some interviews I heard heard or read years ago. It is possible that the government is the major offender there, but the point is that the land is, afaik, locked up by a very small minority which is extremely bad imo.)

At any rate, I can address the need for business regulation with math and duty and history pretty easily. And since humans are now so vast and powerful (with respect to our impact and potential impact on the world) you really cannot remove the superstructure of governance. In fact, it probably needs to be greatly increased in the area of world governance. Then add in the large scale projects that benefit man kind, but are beyond the scope of companies and individuals (either in size or in assumed market value) and you hit a real wall. This really gets into philosophy, but I can bring it bath to math for people who want to take the "oh well, social Darwinism" tact. (I am speaking of things in the last bit like Malaria treatment. The people who suffer from Malaria are all from impoverished areas, so there is no financial incentive for companies to solve the problem, unlike say aids or cancer that hits rich countries hard, too.)

I am kind of rambling here, and I don't know much about the specifics of AC, but my impression is that it does not scale well with human numbers and power. Even if we just start with a simple "your rights end where mine begin" axiom, you get incredibly complex incredibly quickly. (For instance: My factory is on my land, but it causes acid rain on your land a hundred miles away. Or more subtly, I think something you are doing is hurting me, but I don't have the wherewithal to prove it. Or even more subtly, I don't know why things are getting worse, but in reality it is because of actions someone else is taking.)

So, again to ramble a bit further, I would generalize that everyone loves economies of scale, and hate dis economies of scale, but very few see that they are intrinsically related.

[fnord_too]

Originally Posted by amplify

I also don't know why I spend so much time thinking about freedom when I don't believe in free will. I guess that's one of them paradox type things.

Roger that.

Also lol at that post I just made being a 'quick reply.'

[riverfish1]

as long as we're getting into more philosophical discussions

amp could you expand upon your belief that people do not have free will? Is it a BF Skinner like belief in determinism or a Kant (I think, maybe Descartes, its been awhile since studying this) belief that the more rational and educated you become the more you realize you have only one correct course of action to take?

I also want to note that its quite interesting to hear from an ACist who believes in public roads.


And with freedom and liberties are we talking only negative or a combination of negative and positive liberties (and if the combination, where and how do you draw the line when they begin to infringe on each other)?

I have more questions but I want to see if these are answered first.

[amplify]

riverfish,

My thoughts on free will have a variety of influences, but I don't count Skinner among them. Kant as filtered through Schopenhauer (though not in the way you mean), and Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj, definitely. We are dealing with different levels of reality here. In the world of appearances, we seem to be able to make choices. Obviously, these choices on the gross level are influenced by chemistry, conditioning and so on so it is arguable whether we even have free will at this level.

At a level down from gross matter, we are dealing with little jiggly particles following probablistic pathways through spacetime and I don't really see how free will fits in here at all. The characteristics of spacetime follow from the creation of the universe, the actual matter involved has no will, so we would have to be the only things in the universe with this aspect, as a conglomeration of subatomic particles, collected into cellular structures, organized into neurons, and at some level of complexity released from the deterministic and probablistic forms into acting freely.

At a level below that is where Nisargadatta comes in with nonduality. There is only one essence, appearing as everything. Appearing as the mind, the body, everything. There is no doer, nothing done. The appearance of subject/object (the source of a lot of thrashing about if you take the Kant/Schopenhauer route) disappears. All is One, without a second, nondual. This is not mystical bullshytt either, it's completely compatible with modern physics in every way. Plotinus was on to this way back when as well.

Essentially, the very concept of free will turns out to be based on a lot of assumptions that I just don't make, at every level.


I'm not an ACist really, more of a Minarchist and Libertarian.

I don't know what you are asking wrt negative and positive liberties.

[fnord_too]

My view on free will (or lack thereof) is far more mechanical. I believe we are physical beings and bound by physical laws, though we don't really understand the physical laws. This is not the same as predetermination, as if quantum theory is true there is a lot of randomness in the universe.

Amp,

I don't know how you can conclude that the actual matter has no free will. It certainly makes sense, but so do a lot of other things that are not true (as well as a lot that are, well appear to be to speak more precisely). In short, we have no friggin clue why things work the way they do, so to say that these particles that exhibit completely non predictable behavior have no free will is a conclusion that does not follow from the assumptions I would make. (It's probably true, but that is just my intuition, which is based on a lot of things that likely don't extrapolate well modern physics.)

Here is a fun exercise: define free will. I will get Socratic if anyone uses terms like 'conscious' because that is something that also does not have an easy or commonly accepted definition.

[DustinG]

Originally Posted by well named

BTW, I should probably know more about the Georgia/Russia situation than I do. If anyone has any ilinks to news or commentary that are of some depth I'd be appreciative.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.p...xt=va&aid=9816

i posted this earlier

[amplify]

fnord, you're right. I have no ****ing idea what goes on at the quantum level, if anything.

wikiworld says "The question of free will is whether, and in what sense, rational agents exercise control over their actions and decisions."

Don't get Socratic with me, I ain't your Alcibiades.

[metsandfinsfan]

if you dont have freewill, was it your destiny to post in this thread?

this is a serious question

[clowntable]

So why shouldn't the Iranians (or anyone) own nuclear weapons?
I never understood this.

What happens when commodities become much more expensive, and china wants them, we want them, and lots of people who don't like us much (russia, iran) have them is a bit scary to think about.

If instead of warmongering and trying to take resources by force buying them would have been the modus operandi of choice from the beginning this problem would not exist.

I think Russia's actions are much more provocative towards America than America's reaction is to Russia. It's basically a big FU you to the western world and it's influence. Clearly Georgia wasn't a peaceful state but I don't think that warrants another country invading it. That's just a line that should not have been crossed, but was only done so to prove a point to the rest of the world.

What borders are binding, who gets to decide what a nation is?
do you think Tibet and Taiwan should be independant?

What point are you trying to make? cuz afaik, the US did not go into cuba during the cold war

What about invading Iraq, what signal does that send to some nations?

My fundamental belief is that this money belongs to the person who earned it and the state has stolen it from them at gunpoint. Then this becomes an easy moral decision.

The average person votes based on the most ridiculous of reasons, and typically it's the same reason every time.

Do you think Democracy works? If not what alternatives would you suggest? From the tone of it it sounds like you'd prefer a Platonian elitist kinda deal (i.e. exclude the "dumb and uninformed" voters)?

This is pretty terrible. Freedom is just some stupid buzz-word that sounds good. What the hell does it mean here? What do you mean when you say "freedom?"

<insert ethics of liberty mp3 link here once found>

AC is roughly as practical as full-blown communism, which is to say it is not practical whatsoever

Given that Socialism (and thus communism) have more or less been proven to not work and any anrachist ideas that I know of sound vastly superior to the current state of affairs (which btw is drifting more towards socialism every day) this is a bold statement.

I think the broader point is that it's not clear that successfulness of a society can be determined solely by maximizing a particular value, in this case "freedom". This is basically the same problem I have with praxeology as a basis for making political or economic decisions. I don't think the complexities of human interaction can be broken down in such a purely analytic way.

I can't answer this without sounding like an ass but you should just get a book on praxeology and one on freedom and read them and rethink that. Praxeology is explicitly not claiming to work out the complexities of the world but instead focuses on what is provable and just concentrates on that. That is in fact one of the main reasons why Austrian economists exist. We belive that the claims of creating models to represent the complexity of the world as done my common economists is silly at best.
Ethics of Liberty builds on basic principles and outlines a system of Ethics that stresses freedom as the single most important idea and once again a logical reasoning approach is chosen. The only weakness I see in the whole chain of argument is in deciding when a human being takes controll over their own decision making but I still haven't seen a better attempt.

[clowntable]

One cannot eliminate interference. People will always interfere with you. I can interfere with somebody by crossing the street, jaywalking, selling drugs on your corner (wire example ftw), stealing their property, etc. Only by eliminating interaction with other people can one eliminate interference by other people, and very few do that.

Harmfull interaction can only be punished correctly if the concept of freedom is understood correctly as far as I am concerned.
Note that my concept of freedom explicitly allows me to discriminate if I so chose.

At any rate, I can address the need for business regulation with math and duty and history pretty easily. And since humans are now so vast and powerful (with respect to our impact and potential impact on the world) you really cannot remove the superstructure of governance. In fact, it probably needs to be greatly increased in the area of world governance. Then add in the large scale projects that benefit man kind, but are beyond the scope of companies and individuals (either in size or in assumed market value) and you hit a real wall. This really gets into philosophy, but I can bring it bath to math for people who want to take the "oh well, social Darwinism" tact. (I am speaking of things in the last bit like Malaria treatment. The people who suffer from Malaria are all from impoverished areas, so there is no financial incentive for companies to solve the problem, unlike say aids or cancer that hits rich countries hard, too.)

a) I would love to see that math.
b) If there are things that companies cannot handle but government can do them pretty easily, why not let government handle everything? Honest question: Would you concider yourself a Socialist?

I'd love if someone could find a link to the calculation that showed that some pretty long highway in the US could have been build and completely covered with gold for the money it took the government to build it but at the very least I think we can all agree that well uh bridges should end somewhere :P
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Link to text version:
http://mises.org/rothbard/ethics/ethics.asp
Audio:
http://mises.org/media.aspx?action=category&ID=95

[metsandfinsfan]

What about invading Iraq, what signal does that send to some nations?

Whether we had the right to go there or not, our results have been good, and most nonarabic nations are glad we did

[metsandfinsfan]

Clown, are you a true ACist?

[fnord_too]

Clown,

To do the math, we need to agree on the assumptions. My assumptions are along the lines of:
Humanity should strive to maximize several things, including production, knowledge, quality of life while minimizing things like negative impact on ecology and other sentient beings (I'm not a vegetarian or anything, don't read too much into that).

I don't consider myself a communist. I would probably be considered by some as socialist, but I don't know where the lines and definitions are drawn. I believe people should be able to amass just sick levels of wealth, but I don't really believe that sick levels of wealth should be allowed to be passed on.

The math all comes from maximizing and minimizing. If you are talking about maximizing production, just study game theory to see why pure capitalism fails in this regard.

I know a pretty fair amount about business. Here is a quiz for you: what is the most sacred duty of a for profit public company?
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To increase shareholder wealth. That is their fiduciary duty and not striving to that is a major break breach of ethics. Unfortunately, that is often contrary to what is good for the system as a whole. Even when you disregard people who make business decision in a purely EV fashion even when considering breaking the law (that is looking at illegal actions from the perspective of how likely is it I will get caught, what happens if I do get caught, what is the payoff of the action? And these guys do exist, even if they are not the norm), you get into a lot of situations where businesses fiduciary duty is counter to what is good for humanity as a whole.

Examine something like this in your proposed framework:
Cigarette companies sell to all ages and are endorsed by doctors saying they are healthy while other doctors say they are not (who is certifying the doctors is another question entirely). What happens if anything?

Change cigarettes to vitamin C in a situation where another company is saying sugar pills are much more healthy and vitamin C is bad for you. Or any thing where claims are made from both sides and there are public health and/or safety issues surrounding it.

I am not saying the government should run everything, but I am saying that most things need oversight from a disinterested third party. There are several reasons for this that all stem from many sets of starting assumptions.

And again, a lot of people do not realize the scaling problems with a lot of problems. Take software engineering, just as an example. People see reasonably complex programs being developed in by a couple of people in a garage and think that you can scale up to huge projects linearly.

Actually, I think what most people assume is linear extrapolation almost always. This is just a common trap a lot of people fall into. You hear this rationale from people proposing a flat tax for instance, or criticizing waste on large projects (that is ones where there isn't corruption behind the scenes). But in a lot of cases it is just dis economies of scale stemming quite often in large part from the shear combinatorics of people and functions which have to interact and coordinate.

Here is a physical example to ground this in something more tangible: If a boat with a perfectly efficient engine is traveling through the water at 5 knots it will not have the same fuel economy as when it is traveling through the water at 10 knots, because the resistance of the water does not scale linearly, it scales with the square of velocity. In cars, at slow speeds, most of your lost energy is going to heat; at high speeds it is going to overcome air resistance because again, resistance rises as the square of velocity.

Getting back to business and economics, there are very real dis economies of scale as well as economies of scale, and I think the dis-economies rise at least quadratically and at worst factorially.

Also, in considering all this, how do you deal with academia? Most academia from kindergarten through the post graduate world is subsidized by governments, through taxes. I would argue quite vehemently that the long term benefits from these actions far outweigh the costs, even if it is not always immediately apparent. In these less government worlds is the theft from the people to fund these activities acceptable?