The best part about this cute Ron Paul awesome anti-government moment is that it shows how irrational market actors can be. He willingly risked his business model and forced private patients to subsidize the cost of medicare/medicaid patients because of he ideals. Certainly a noble move from the libertarian perspective, but it is completely irrational.

Might want to think that through from an Austrian perspective on free markets.

Deal, luckily, I never said that.

Love how anytime a RP critic is asked "who would you vote for" or "what are the most important issues iyo" there's NO RESPONSE

This is an election folks. RP vs other people. If you think RP is inferior to another candidate BRING IT.

Why/How would I do that?

I'd vote RP over Obama that's for sure. But RP is, in reality, a very very flawed candidate.

as long as it is not equally difficult, this system is clearly superior.

taxation is clearly theft. not sure how that's even disputable in this thread. now whether or not you think its necessary for "the greater good" is another debate.

The weird this is that this was, I think, in a discussion about abortion. So people were all "Ron Paul would let states do oppressive stuff imo", AlexM was like "hey that's a good thing, pro-freedom centralized decisions are bad" and then he FREAKS OUT when people mention any actual examples of pro-freedom centralized decisions.

LOL suing me. Beyond that nobody knows your actual name, and that nothing I said was false, I'm pretty sure the insinuation that you are for states' rights is not going to cause you any actual damages.

He didn't force anyone to be his patient.

You also have no proof private insurance patients subsidized the others, maybe RP subsidized them by taking the hit himself?

I don't see how this is the austrian interpretation.

For your reference from:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/theft
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/felony

theft
felony:
Do you see that to declare something theft it have to be unlawful like in against the common/federal/state law?

Since people keep making argument which is refutable by reading dictionary I may just as well go argue against guys who think Earth is 10k years old. They are at least trying to not be that blatantly ignorant and sometimes come up with entertaining stuff.
Have the thread for yourself fanboys.

Doesn't matter what interpretation it is.

Oh ok, well here is how I see it. The revenue from his business came from private insurance companies (federally subsidized lol) and other private sources. People who planned on using medicare/medicaid paid nothing. So the operating costs of his business were paid from the revenue from private whatever and the medicare/medicaid people were provided with a free service paid for by private whatevers.

This ainec

Gary Johnson and Dennis Kucinich are far superior and both have the same chance of getting elected this term.

I'll take Paul and you can have Johnson and Kucinich. Must win the presidency to win. Any amount up to $300k.

If I do some volunteer work on the side, was that work paid for by my regular employer? After all, my living expenses were paid for by my salary, and without that, I would not have the ability to do the volunteer work. Have I somehow forced my employer to subsidize my volunteer work?

I will bet infinity skalansky bucks.

The RP fans are correct. The use of force is not correct. He never forced anyone to use his service.

That being said, the people who paid for his service subsidized those who did not pay. In your hypothetical I think your volunteer work was subsidized by your main occupation.

Even if subsidize is not the correct term RP still made an extremely illogical business decision based upon his morals. Which is fine, but I think free market types assume that people will make the best business decisions based on their available information. I find it funny, not necessarily a great point just funny, that someone who love the logic of the incentives in the free market and yet he openly defies it.

OK, here's a reply, just so the next time we wonder whether Ron Paul thinks that genocide proves that God doesn't exist--or that biological organisms aren't evolving, I might have gotten those mixed up--or whether letting Texas ban sodomy is a shinning example of individual liberty, or whether he has any clue what half of the words in economics mean this isn't brought up as some huge trump card.

Let's be clear: Ron Paul can be a woefully unqualified candidate on his own merits. I don't need to compare him to anyone else, and when the Santorum supporters invade the forum, you can bet that I'll be mocking their ridiculous arguments as well, at least until I stop caring about or drawing humor from their insanity.

Are we making a list of people who aren't going to be on the ballot next November who I'd like to be president? Because if that's the case, there are a lot of people better than Ron Paul. (And Ron Paul might not even be the best fringe candidate in the Republican primary.)

It's not that every single one of Ron Paul's positions is terrible. It's that the more than you learn about the man, the more you question his ability to think logically, surround himself with good people, and lead effectively.

Seriously, though, make a thread where people talk about the issues that they consider most important in a presidential candidate. If it's still running before it gets overrun by people shilling for Ron Paul, I'd even participate.

But you should already be able to infer that I'd prefer to support a candidate who cared about civil liberties more than states' rights. (And definitely a candidate who understood the difference.)

And maybe you could see that I'd rather a candidate who wasn't scientifically illiterate, and proud of it. One who had a nuanced enough grasp of the economy that he or she wasn't likely to make things worse. Not having racist newsletters attached to your name is a plus; I'd like a candidate who wasn't bigoted, or didn't have bigots ghostwrite. Are those the most important things? No, but they're pretty important, and shape approaches to myriad policies in ways both subtle and profound.

I'd want a candidate who didn't seek to impose some hackneyed utopian vision, but actually was interested in the practicalities of running a nation of 300 million persons. And of course it'd be great to stop some of the wars, both foreign and domestic: on crime, on drugs, on terror. And to laugh people who complain about the war on Christmas. There are a lot of things the federal government should do more of, and a lot it should do less of. I'd like someone who understood the difference. And who could articulate a vision for a tax policy and civil society that made sense. (That's too much: even one of those two would be enough.)

And I'd like someone who cared enough about these results, and achieving them, that he or she was willing to take some risks and show the leadership needed to make things happen.

So I'm very confident that come next November, the names on the ballot are going to fall well short of those ideals. And this isn't a comprehensive list, by any means. There's a limit to executive authority (well, at least according to the candidate I'm constructing here) so every single policy prescription isn't going to be enumerated here, nor am I really giving much thought to what I am including here and what I am omitting. Potentially some things that matter very much to me. I'll add those to my next rant.

Now, Ron Paul's not the worst guy running, not by a long shot. But is he someone whom I would unreservedly and passionately support? Of course not. But here, in this thread, half of the participants approach him with messianic fervor.

If you want to make the argument that Paul is slightly less rotten than the rest of the apples in the Republican field, go for it. Huntsman, at least, has the good humor to know that being a reasonable, literate person is disqualifying in the Republican party, and no one knows anything about Johnson. But it's not obvious that Paul is better than those two, at least to me, owing to my ignorance of the details of those two gentlemen's positions, perhaps, and that's within the extraordinarily narrow scope of active, declared Republican candidates.

So there's your answer. I'm sure there will be a torrent of poorly-thought-out criticisms of this poorly-though-out post, but I'm certain that my replies to most of them would be better situated in another thread.

Ron Paul extended interview - Nashua Telegraph 10/28/11

sholar, how many times did you crank one out while putting together that post?

in general, RP supporters couldn't care less about RP vs. gary johnson, RP vs. [libertarian X], etc. it's all the same ****. gary johnson's personality might be a bit different than RP's, but they'd make the same decision in like 99.9% of scenarios. RP just happens to be the most well-known/popular libertarian at the moment. you don't seem to get it.

in before a response along the lines of, "but he doesn't believe in evolution!"

... :/

I think it's usually more the case that anti-free market types assume that people will only look to maximize profits (and so the myths of the One Big Firm and enslaving the consumer are born) and not take into account morals, vision, emotions, etc. Free market types, in my experience, are more likely to acknowledge that people will simply make the decisions they make, as humans, and live with the consequences.

RP knows he just probably wouldn't be happy accepting abortion or taking medicaid money or charging someone who can't pay, don't think there's anything else more +EV in life than happiness.