Sounds like coercion to me

This error rises from stinking hubris,
That man can in reality own land.
Mere convention! Silly legal fiction!
Man no more owns land than Eagle owns sky,
Or Fish owns the seas, they all own themselves.
How men would sneer if Bears drew up contracts,
Dividing the forests among themselves!
No more than men should enslave each other,
Should they enslave the earth to rash purpose,
Causing damage that will long outlive him,
For the days of men are numbered and soon,
All that remain are signs of his passing.

Seems like Osama is living in Pakistan

Why's my president living in Pakistan?

i think, being as he's a muslim, he went there on that pilgrimage thingy they do.

if you read the first 2 pages of this thread you will see amplify defending libertarianism and Zurvan attacking it, quite epic.

this

LOL, the French are rioting because they want to raise the retirement age to 62.

LOL?

yah, french rioting is amazing

fyp

I really really need to join a union and get some of those ridiculous benefits and wages they pull.

I thought it was 67, now its 62. The thing I admire the most of the french is that they dont let the goverment **** around with them.

Yeah, gotta keep those government benefits flowing. More riots to stop the government from not giving you other people's money! Burn the bastards!

I think I need to stay out of this thread or it will ruin my opinion of people that I really like everywhere else.

Yeah **** Taxation!!


Am I doing it right?

french culture has many great aspects. its politics, however, is just alien to me. On the radio this morning they were talking to these students who were marching to protect the rights of middle aged people to retire on bloated pensions. "If they don't retire, how will i get a job", Nice.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYpYs9GBXwY

apparently the french fail at economics.

Though this craziness kind of makes me wish I was french. I'll hate on their laziness all day long, but really I wouldn't mind having the same standard of living with 5x the vacation, massively shorter work weeks, and a huge pension when I retire.

Also I was reading in the paper today that the average Greek retirees pension is 102% of their salary!!! WTF NO WONDER THEY'RE BANKRUPT.

it's the classic 'government money comes out of thin air' argument, with a side order of 'pensions also come from nowhere', i think, which is common enough in the uk, and probably the us, too, i imagine.

They also rioted because the work week was supposed to be raised above 35h

Yeah a combination of both of these which is kind of crazy concidering that one may argue they were one of the earliest democracies and they certainly had some of the greatest free market economic minds i.e. Turgot, Say and Bastiat et al.

tl;dr totally biased short history of economics:
These French influenced by Irishman Cantillon (who I concider the true father of economics, lol Smith) who was himself influenced by the late Scholastics of the School of Salamanca in Spain who were influenced by Thomas Aquinas (who goes back to Aristotle) are basically the building block upon which Austrian Economics is founded
If you pay close attention you'll see a pretty Catholic tradition. I don't remember who proposed it but I read in a very fascinating paper¹ that this Catholic tradition which was rooted in "yeah you're allowed to enjoy life on earth, pay up in the end and all is fine and dandy" resulted in them approaching economics with a "consumer mindset" i.e. from the demand side

Obviously the evil Brits with their Calvinist "work bitch, enjoy working" mantra were more supply oriented (i.e. objective theory of value aka. a good is worth X because of all the precious work that went into it). Protestant Prussians obviously followed this mindset (-> Methodenstreit etc.) and the Socialist and Commie bastards picked it up because hey the worker is the hero after all!!11111ONE

didn't they also go in big for john law/the sort of money supply that makes austrian's shudder?

So, what you are saying is to get the French to actually fight a war, just threaten to take their benefits away.

To be fair to the french, I don't think anyone has ever questioned their willingness to fight amongst themselves.