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Anarcho Capitalists and "spreading the message" Anarcho Capitalists and "spreading the message"

04-03-2010 , 12:49 PM
I love the interplay between
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Of course I'm just spouting from the mouth here and haven't done any homework. I haven't read countless books and articles by Rothbard, Block, Mises, Ron Paul, and Rockwell. So yeah this is all just some fantasy, and clearly only government can build us roads to get around. Just ignore Block's 500+ page book to the contrary.
and the fact that this guy appears to have literally no knowledge of the actual world. Space travel and the internet as free market examples? Wondering what would happen in a world with no government as if nobody has ever tried a decentralized government?
04-03-2010 , 12:50 PM
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Originally Posted by Not_In_My_Name
lol at the guy wearing the suit. He must be the CEO of this Somalian DRO company.
omg A+
04-03-2010 , 01:18 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
I want to note that this started because I noted that ACists have the same rhetoric as communists, in that any negative can be handwaved away because it wasn't pure enough
lets not assign this fallacy to just pure AC or pure communists, pretty much everyone uses it. tarp anyone? for example lots of keynesians respond to failed stimulus with the ol' "it wasn't big enough!" argument.
04-03-2010 , 01:22 PM
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Originally Posted by DVaut1
Max said that there are non econ related crackpots views that seem to be fairly common amongst ACists.
This is also true of Democrats (9/11) and Republicans (Birthers). We just get a higher exposure to the libertarian crackpots in this forum due to the quantity of libertarians. Also the libertarian crackpots seem more cracked since their views are less voiced, even though really they're no more insane than the others. Just more creative!

I would say that crackpots are probably more likely to be libertarian though. Being able to think outside of the box whether in sane or crazy ways makes one more open to non-Republican/Democrat political associations in general.

Last edited by AlexM; 04-03-2010 at 01:31 PM.
04-03-2010 , 01:23 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
I love the interplay between


and the fact that this guy appears to have literally no knowledge of the actual world. Space travel and the internet as free market examples? Wondering what would happen in a world with no government as if nobody has ever tried a decentralized government?
so are you saying there is zero opportunity cost to government spending and taxation? or that it is negligible?
04-03-2010 , 01:27 PM
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Originally Posted by tubasteve
so are you saying there is zero opportunity cost to government spending and taxation? or that it is negligible?
What the **** are you talking about? I'm saying that buccobaseball should consider reading books by sane people about the real world instead of books by Walter Block about glass mesh overpasses.

I don't even know why you picked that post to quote for that inexplicable strawman.
04-03-2010 , 01:31 PM
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Originally Posted by tubasteve
lets not assign this fallacy to just pure AC or pure communists, pretty much everyone uses it. tarp anyone? for example lots of keynesians respond to failed stimulus with the ol' "it wasn't big enough!" argument.
And when it's not by a libertarian you understand how intellectually dishonest it is, but if you find it on Mises you're persuaded by it. The problem with the No True Scotsman isn't that it's unique to a certain group of crackpots, it's that it's bull****.

It allows for, and this is big for crackpot theories, a complete lack of falsifiability. The biggest issues ACism and Marxism face is that reality contradicts a bunch of their beliefs. This is a serious impediment to "spreading the message".
04-03-2010 , 01:33 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
What the **** are you talking about? I'm saying that buccobaseball should consider reading books by sane people about the real world instead of books by Walter Block about glass mesh overpasses.

I don't even know why you picked that post to quote for that inexplicable strawman.
one of his major premises is that government confiscation of wealth discourages growth. growth is exponential. therefore, government confiscation of wealth really, really hurts growth, and could potentially stifle innovation. this is a large argument against the welfare state/other massive spending initiatives as the wealth diverted towards fixing short term problems cannot be used to fix long term ones.

therefore while it may be unlikely, it isn't all that ridiculous to suggest we might be significantly more technologically advanced today (or tomorrow, etc) without the government spending 20% of its money on dropping bombs on brown people, etc.

sure we might not have a space program, but its kinda hard/impossible to know whether the space program has made us better off than normal economic growth. i'm gonna assume you haven't read economics in one lesson and you probably won't, but this is what hazlitt and bastiat in the original essay mean by "what is seen and what is not seen".

even your so called books by people in the so called real world acknowledge many of the things in my post. see the romer paper.

http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/ca...ax-cutter.html
04-03-2010 , 01:35 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
And when it's not by a libertarian you understand how intellectually dishonest it is, but if you find it on Mises you're persuaded by it. The problem with the No True Scotsman isn't that it's unique to a certain group of crackpots, it's that it's bull****.

It allows for, and this is big for crackpot theories, a complete lack of falsifiability. The biggest issues ACism and Marxism face is that reality contradicts a bunch of their beliefs. This is a serious impediment to "spreading the message".
i don't really read mises anymore, precisely b/c so much of their writing is bull****, nice try again though.
04-03-2010 , 01:38 PM
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Originally Posted by AlexM
This is also true of Democrats (9/11) and Republicans (Birthers). We just get a higher exposure to the libertarian crackpots in this forum due to the quantity of libertarians. Also the libertarian crackpots seem more cracked since their views are less voiced, even though really they're no more insane than the others. Just more creative!
I never meant to imply that this wasn't the case. I would have suggestions to liberals and conservatives if they had a "spreading the message" thread. Although, I do think that crackpotism is a bigger problem for ACists than liberals or conservatives. Some of the crackpot views in conservatism (creationism etc) probably end up getting more people to buy into it.
04-03-2010 , 01:47 PM
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Originally Posted by Not_In_My_Name
Is this guy some awesome ACist parody gimmick or is he for realz? If he's real, he's an absolute gift to the non-Acists here.
Yeah, because one guy who doesn't make sense completely invalidates whatever good points the ACists have...
04-03-2010 , 01:50 PM
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Originally Posted by tubasteve
one of his major premises is that government confiscation of wealth discourages growth. growth is exponential. therefore, government confiscation of wealth really, really hurts growth, and could potentially stifle innovation. this is a large argument against the welfare state/other massive spending initiatives as the wealth diverted towards fixing short term problems cannot be used to fix long term ones.
Government doesn't just eat the money it confiscates, it spends it. Inefficiently, corruptly, whatever, but it's not gone. It goes from some people to some other people. Understanding that the government isn't something that was arbitrarily imposed on humanity will be a big moment for you. Government is composed of and run by people.

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therefore while it may be unlikely, it isn't all that ridiculous to suggest we might be significantly more technologically advanced today (or tomorrow, etc) without the government spending 20% of its money on dropping bombs on brown people, etc.
Government OVERPRODUCES INNOVATION. I mean, for Christ's sake in the next paragraph you bitch about the wastefulness of spending billions of dollars on the space program. That was a whole bunch of money allocated to research above and beyond the market demand for velcro and Tang.

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sure we might not have a space program, but its kinda hard/impossible to know whether the space program has made us better off than normal economic growth. i'm gonna assume you haven't read economics in one lesson and you probably won't, but this is what hazlitt and bastiat in the original essay mean by "what is seen and what is not seen".
The title of that Hazlitt book is pretty telling, imo. What if it takes more than one lesson?

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even your so called books by people in the so called real world acknowledge many of the things in my post. see the romer paper.

http://www.usnews.com/money/blogs/ca...ax-cutter.html
You remain unbelievably terrible at distinguishing general statements from absolute. Stop trying to read between the lines of every statement people make. Don't try to take things to what you see as their logical conclusion. I am not saying that government is perfect or that there are no negative consequences to taxation.

The interplay of tax rates and the economy is a complex subject(potentially even a TWO LESSON subject). Obviously really high tax rates will hurt the economy. That's not something you're teaching me, that's something I already knew.

You might not read Mises anymore, but IN THIS POST you're making the same "well under a true free market" argument that they love.
04-03-2010 , 02:05 PM
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Originally Posted by DVaut1
Let's take out stupid ideas, obviously 100% of the population has stupid ideas.
FYP
04-03-2010 , 02:11 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
Government doesn't just eat the money it confiscates, it spends it. Inefficiently, corruptly, whatever, but it's not gone. It goes from some people to some other people. Understanding that the government isn't something that was arbitrarily imposed on humanity will be a big moment for you. Government is composed of and run by people.
1) if the money is gone, its gone. even if the government only wastes like 5% of the money it spends, that compounds a lot over decades/centuries.

2) governments aren't really composed of or run by people unless you have direct democracy. representative democracy leads to all sorts of conflict of interest: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_failure

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Government OVERPRODUCES INNOVATION. I mean, for Christ's sake in the next paragraph you bitch about the wastefulness of spending billions of dollars on the space program. That was a whole bunch of money allocated to research above and beyond the market demand for velcro and Tang.
i mean i love learning about space and all, i just don't think its necessarily the best use of our resources. i found a link claiming that in 2000 we spent more money on defense research than all other private-sector R&D, do you think this is a good form of "innovation"?

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The title of that Hazlitt book is pretty telling, imo. What if it takes more than one lesson?
did you even look at it? its pretty long despite the name.

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You remain unbelievably terrible at distinguishing general statements from absolute. Stop trying to read between the lines of every statement people make. Don't try to take things to what you see as their logical conclusion. I am not saying that government is perfect or that there are no negative consequences to taxation.

The interplay of tax rates and the economy is a complex subject(potentially even a TWO LESSON subject). Obviously really high tax rates will hurt the economy. That's not something you're teaching me, that's something I already knew.

You might not read Mises anymore, but IN THIS POST you're making the same "well under a true free market" argument that they love.
i thought i was pretty clear that the actual conseqences were unknowable and i specifically said:

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therefore while it may be unlikely, it isn't all that ridiculous to suggest we might be significantly more technologically advanced today (or tomorrow, etc) without the government spending 20% of its money on dropping bombs on brown people, etc.

Last edited by tubasteve; 04-03-2010 at 02:18 PM.
04-03-2010 , 02:14 PM
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Originally Posted by DVaut1
I'm more than happy to use libertarian, but then when I do, someone VERY clever like taso comes along and is like "but ACists don't believe in Constitutionalism like libertarians, we're ANARCHISTS".
Libertarian is a broad term that definitely includes ACists and anyone who tells you otherwise is clueless. HOWEVER, this only applies to lower-case "libertarian". Upper-case "Libertarian" is only applicable to members of the Libertarian Party.
04-03-2010 , 02:19 PM
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i mean i love learning about space and all, i just don't think its necessarily the best use of our resources. i found a link claiming that in 2000 we spent more money on defense research than all other private-sector R&D, do you think this is a good form of "innovation"?
Probably not? But you're missing the point. Without government funding, there'd be way less research. We have TOO MUCH technology. The Internet was created through defense research, for Christ's sake. You can't simultaneously bitch about wasteful government spending and claim the government is holding back the pace of innovation.
04-03-2010 , 02:25 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
Probably not? But you're missing the point. Without government funding, there'd be way less research. We have TOO MUCH technology. The Internet was created through defense research, for Christ's sake. You can't simultaneously bitch about wasteful government spending and claim the government is holding back the pace of innovation.

do you really believe the internet would never have come to be without a government spending/research initiative behind it? i don't believe it for a second and i don't think many engineers/cs would either.

furthermore i thought it was universally accepted by economists that government spending crowds out private investment. and even if it doesn't here for some reason, who cares? wouldn't you rather you and your families have more money in your pockets and therefore a higher standard of living due to the increased savings and/or consumption available to you, rather than giving lockheed millions to research the next stealth aircraft? when i say we could be better off through increased growth, understand that growth doesn't necessarily mean innovation.

for example what about health care? that 50 bil a year spent on defense research (and probably more since my numbers are old) can buy a lot of health care, whether the money is in the hands of the government or the people.

Last edited by tubasteve; 04-03-2010 at 02:30 PM.
04-03-2010 , 02:29 PM
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do you really believe the internet would never have come to be without a government spending/research initiative behind it? i don't believe it for a second and i don't think many engineers/cs would either.
There's that absolute problem again. Christ.
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wouldn't you rather you and your families have more money in your pockets and therefore a higher standard of living due to the increased savings and/or consumption available to you, rather than giving lockheed millions to research the next stealth aircraft? when i say we could be better off through increased growth, understand that growth doesn't necessarily mean innovation.
I don't support EVERY government program just because I'm not an anarchist.
04-03-2010 , 02:31 PM
my point is that this is the kind of **** your money is being spent on, and you don't really seem to care.

for someone that claims to love poor people so much more than ACists, i'm really confused.
04-03-2010 , 02:36 PM
I don't really seem to care? What would you have me do about it? I voted for Obama over McCain.

I don't claim to love poor people more than you guys, I think most of you are dumb, not evil. You don't understand(because of a shocking ignorance of history) that without a welfare state's safety net poor people's lives are really bad.
04-03-2010 , 02:37 PM
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Originally Posted by DVaut1
I just want to say this, pretty much:

People who believe the state is pernicious and evil, the welfare state is evil, taxes are slavery/theft, fed loose monetary policies are going to doom us, Republicans and Democrats are all socialist evil thieves, and Ron Paul would save us if only the powers-that-be would stand down and let him...are much more likely to believe in non-mainstream stuff, outside of econ.
I pretty much agree with this. Once a person is willing to go outside of the mainstream in one area, they're much more likely to be willing to do so in other areas. Doesn't really matter if it's libertarianism, conspiracy theories, paganism, BDSM, Live Action Role-Playing or whatever. A person who is doing one thing that is well out of the box of mainstream society is clearly going to be more likely to do other things as well. This doesn't mean there's any relation between these things outside of that though.
04-03-2010 , 02:45 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
I don't really seem to care? What would you have me do about it? I voted for Obama over McCain.


cuz obama is really interested in cutting defense spending and/or reducing the scope of any government program...
04-03-2010 , 02:46 PM
More than McCain, yes. Don't you remember when Republicans flipped the **** out over his low defense budget?
04-03-2010 , 02:52 PM
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Originally Posted by FlyWf
I don't really seem to care? What would you have me do about it? I voted for Obama over McCain.

I don't claim to love poor people more than you guys, I think most of you are dumb, not evil. You don't understand(because of a shocking ignorance of history) that without a welfare state's safety net poor people's lives are really bad.
How can we know if poor people's lives really are worse? We've never NOT had a welfare state, at least not in the past 70+ years. Even if we assume you're right...

What causes them to be poor in the first place?

Does constant inflation and devaluing of the dollar help or hurt the poor?

You're reading a version of history written and revised entirely by statists. Of course the state will have you believe that poor people "need the state" to save them from excessive profits and exploitation. If you don't believe us just look at how much an overdraft fee or payday loan costs!! Greed caused the crisis, and we politicians are out to stop it! Of course as they are proclaiming this, they are behind closed doors printing up more money and spending cash at strip clubs.

I guess if you count constant "reforms" and "crackdowns" as innovation then the state crushes private enterprise hands down. How many times will we have to "reform" the tax system, Social Security, healthcare, and banking before we get it right? They are talking about "reforming" the post office which is basically cutting Saturday delivery. Gee, real innovative there. Thanks for adding some value for us customers.

Also something interesting to look at, with regards to inflation is the actual coinage itself. It used to be 90% silver, now it is mostly copper. They inflated the dollar so bad that now regular circulated dimes and quarters from pre 1964 sell at 11x face value or more. Pennies pre 1982 are worth over 2 cents. Nickels now are creeping up near 6 cents each again in face value. Yet no one mentions this hidden tax that robs your beloved poor and hits them the hardest. The Congress has been talking already about changing the nickel to avoid problems with people hoarding them. So we will get robbed again. The poor will get hardest, again. And again no one seems to mind. Interesting.
04-03-2010 , 02:53 PM
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Originally Posted by tubasteve


cuz obama is really interested in cutting defense spending and/or reducing the scope of any government program...
Small differences in government policy, especially a government as powerful as the United States government, can make a massive difference in the lives of ordinary people. These small differences don't sound like much when you type them out on an internet forum, but in real life, to real people affected by them, they can make a huge difference.

      
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