It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
You don't mean-
The Gulch?!
I want every ill-gotten and misspent tax dollar we've got working towards finding this man.
It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
In a land where he makes all of his own food and paves all of his own roads and makes all his own electricity.
Ah, Somalia.
Truly, it is the Garden of Eden.
I'm thinking it's actually Brickwall-land. Because,
Hi I am a brick wall! My cognitive functions are limited to that of several bricks with some cement in-between. I dislike taxes 'cus WRAGLWAAAAAAAARGL!
The really sad thing is that I don't believe for a second that you actually think such a group would be as or more effective. It all boils down to your own deep and intense personal cowardice in the face of taxes.
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
Taxes boil down to your ability to morally justify seizing someone else's property and spending it to your own benefit. I would be more thoughtful about how I threw the word cowardice around if I were you.
There are two distinct libertarian motivations: one is the conviction that the free market will do everything better without intervention; the other is the conviction that although government intervention may be beneficial on the whole, it still amounts to a morally impermissible form of coercion. You can believe one but not the other, or, as you appear to, both.
Unfortunately, the idea that taxation is morally impermissible coercion is retarded and I can only offhand think of one well-regarded academic who has written in defense of the idea. Robert Nozick, for the folks at home. Just about everyone else in ethics seems to come down on the other side of the issue.
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
What's stopping this presumably privately-operated "watchdog" from being just as corrupt and influenced by special interests?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
What's stopping this presumably privately-operated "watchdog" from being just as corrupt and influenced by special interests?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
Because the free market is 100% perfect and good. Duh.
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
What's stopping this presumably privately-operated "watchdog" from being just as corrupt and influenced by special interests?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
You've never benefited from the collection and spending of taxes? Where do you live?
I recognize that public goods can exist and that society as a whole can experience a net benefit from government programs.
Notwithstanding that, it costs so much money just to do the research to plan public programs correctly that we usually blunder into them ineffectually, often causing too much or too little of a good to be produced relative to the true cost society must bear when it creates and maintains near-permanent, ineffective bureaucracies that have little incentive to do their job and every incentive to fight each other for pork spending.
The burden of proof ought to be on politicians to show that a given program is publicly necessary AND that we are capable of tackling the situation effectively; rarely are either of these conditions even addressed.
kedinik on
I made a game! Hotline Maui. Requires mouse and keyboard.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
If the market will inevitably create such a watchdog, then why didn't it? We got the FDA because of public outrage over ongoing contamination and health risks. Wiki:
By the 1930s, muckraking journalists, consumer protection organizations, and federal regulators began mounting a campaign for stronger regulatory authority by publicizing a list of injurious products which had been ruled permissible under the 1906 law, including radioactive beverages, cosmetics which caused blindness, and worthless "cures" for diabetes and tuberculosis. The resulting proposed law was unable to get through the Congress of the United States for five years, but was rapidly enacted into law following the public outcry over the 1937 Elixir Sulfanilamide tragedy, in which over 100 people died after using a drug formulated with a toxic, untested solvent.
If you think that the market can prevent that sort of thing now, then you'd have to explain what the salient differences are between now and then.
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
Because Bush deregulated the FDA and made them virtually powerless! The peanut butter outbreak was his last free market gift to the American people before he walked out the door! Fuck
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
For the same reason it's worth funding the CIA and NSA when things like 9/11 inevitably slip through.
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
What's stopping this presumably privately-operated "watchdog" from being just as corrupt and influenced by special interests?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
Isn't that how half the "organic accreditation" companies work now? Hell, movie studios and other industries (which I can't for the life of me remember) get reviewed and endorsed by in-house outfits.
You're trying to make me piss myself laughing, right?
*company knowingly sells tainted product for years*
*FDA & CDC tracks large outbreak to company selling tainted product, shuts down plants and moves to criminally penalize them*
*company decares bankruptcy in wake of shutdowns and recalls*
Hur dur, looks like the free market found a way to me! *posts link to the PCA's website*
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
What's stopping this presumably privately-operated "watchdog" from being just as corrupt and influenced by special interests?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
See also: the nice folks who rate bonds.
Eat it You Nasty Pig. on
it was the smallest on the list but
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Even if the average implemented program were enacted as carelessly as you claim, chances are decent that it's better than doing nothing. Some sort of consumer driven equivalent can't just "spring up", especially without the resources provided in taxes. And even ignoring or overcoming all of these problems, as has been pointed out before, what's to stop these great new consumer committees from falling prey to the same corruption?
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
Murders will inevitably happen, so let's go ahead and get rid of police as well. Foreign countries -- particularly adversaries -- will inevitably succeed in keeping at least a few secrets from our government, so abolish the NSA and CIA as well. Because obviously, if a government agency cannot do its job flawlessly for all eternity, it's worthless.
You know what Libertarians having a poor grasp of reality isn't related to? Steele possibly resigning.
If he can successfully court them, though, it might be tangentially related to him keeping his job.
Steele is a neocon, he gets no love from the liberty community. He and the current incarnation of the GOP deserve each other.
I don't disagree.
The thing is, his job is to rebuild the Republican coalition. Being able to do so means he can keep his job. Libertarians (capital L) may not be huge fans of his, but they're a better place to start than virtually anywhere else.
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything.
You give it to me presimplified, dude, in the form of pie-in-the-sky imaginary private organizations that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever describe in any detail how they would work or where their coercive authority would come from. Give me a detailed, cited position paper about Magic Regulatory Non-Government Body That Keeps People From Dying and I will happily give you the meaty body blows you crave.
The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
This all sounds like an argument for greater transparency rather than an entirely different scheme altogether. Look, this isn't like buying a lemontastic car or a crappy DVD player. If you put e coli or carcinogens in your body you're already fucked, so it makes sense to put our focus on lengthy pre-release testing and on-site inspection rather than hoping that the threat of class-action lawsuits after the fact will keep companies honest on their own.
(Incidentally, we already know that doesn't work, since with criminal and civil liability at stake companies still make the conscious choice to harm their consumers - what on earth makes you think a private agency or the threat of suits will be sufficient on their own?)
EDIT: this will be my last post on the subject. We now return to SLUM LOVE , already in progress.
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
Murders will inevitably happen, so let's go ahead and get rid of police as well. Foreign countries -- particularly adversaries -- will inevitably succeed in keeping at least a few secrets from our government, so abolish the NSA and CIA as well. Because obviously, if a government agency cannot do its job flawlessly for all eternity, it's worthless.
Wars, too. Those will inevitably happen, so let's abolish the military and rely solely on private militias.
Oh wait, I forgot, the military is the only thing taxes are allowed to pay for!
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
For the same reason it's worth funding the CIA and NSA when things like 9/11 inevitably slip through.
He also ignored my edit pointing out that it was the government that figured out that it was that plant's products that were causing the sickness, so the company couldn't have done anything without the government.
At this point, I'm not sure that Steele can do much of anything to rebuild the coalition, if there's much to be done. Elected officials may be able to, if they figure out what to do and how to do it, but most of them seem to be more interested in saying "No!" right now. Steele began as a dubious figure with little power, and now he's a laughingstock.
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
Yeah, when an organization is understaffed and underfunded to the point it no longer performs it's functions that clearly point to the need for it to be dissolved. *nods sagaciously*
This thread will probably be locked if it doesn't get back on track soon.
Hey, how about somebody start a thread on "libertarianism lol" and let this thread stay "steele lol" (ostensibly). Please. At the very least stop feeding KevinNash and kedinick.
At this point, I'm not sure that Steele can do much of anything to rebuild the coalition, if there's much to be done. Elected officials may be able to, if they figure out what to do and how to do it, but most of them seem to be more interested in saying "No!" right now. Steele began as a dubious figure with little power, and now he's a laughingstock.
If there was anyone who could help pull the Republican party out of its mess right now, Steele isn't it.
I think Steele was probably doomed from the moment they made him do the whole "extremely exxagerated so-called hip-hop image" thing. You don't want the fresh new face of your party and "clown" to be common associations and when you start saying things like "bling bling in the stimulus package" you can't expect much else.
Granted I think that particular comment was from Bachmann, not Steele, but it's a pretty good illustration of the type of dismally ignorant strategy they've been playing with for the last few months.
I don't think they made him do that. Can you really see that idea coming from someone like Eric Cantor or Haley Barbour? Seems to be all Steele to me.
I don't know - they all seem like buffons to me.
I guess there is perhaps a degree or level of buffon-ness each one of them holds, but a buffon's as buffonish as a buffon will be a buffon.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds.2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
edited May 2009
Here's the way I look at it, if you all are willing to indulge some speculative psychology: in the GOP, bottom-up change like what happened with the Democratic Party just isn't feasible, because what you find among GOP supporters are a great number of people who to some degree are psychologically reliant on top-down diktat and tradition. Look at the reverence among the faithful for traditional authority figures: police, soldiers, preachers, even coaches are taken very seriously and conversely there is a sense of shock and betrayal when an individual from one of those institutions expresses an unorthodox position. There was that study done in the 50s showing that people who identified as "liberal" tended to be more adaptable - finding a new route around a traffic jam, etc. - while "conservatives" were much more likely to sit through the jam and grouse about it. In practical terms, we can see this in action in, for instance, the revulsion with which Huckabee (EDIT: and Ron Paul) was treated in 2008, or the crap McCain took in 2000 for running against the anointed one.
So I just don't see the GOP reinventing itself from the bottom up - the libertarians could, but they're a minority and they could just as easily bolt. The avenue I see for the party is some authoritative, charismatic figure - someone from private industry or possibly the military, with deep pockets and no prior political experience - emerging and sort of stepping forward and pulling the sword from the stone. If the move was bold and audacious enough I can honestly see the party falling into line behind them.
So I just don't see the GOP reinventing itself from the bottom up - the libertarians could, but they're a minority and they could just as easily bolt. The avenue I see for the party is some authoritative, charismatic figure - someone from private industry or possibly the military, with deep pockets and no prior political experience - emerging and sort of stepping forward and pulling the sword from the stone. If the move was bold and audacious enough I can honestly see the party falling into line behind them.
Colin Powell almost fits that role, except his image has been fairly tarnished by the WMD debacle, and Rush hates him. And really, Rush's hatred could be an asset if he did it right. However, the first bit does make him more or less ineligible for this role.
Posts
You don't mean-
The Gulch?!
I want every ill-gotten and misspent tax dollar we've got working towards finding this man.
I have you now, Galt.
Ah, Somalia.
XBL Gametag: mailarde
Screen Digest LOL3RZZ
Truly, it is the Garden of Eden.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Is the Space-Rand reptilian?
I'm thinking it's actually Brickwall-land. Because,
Hi I am a brick wall! My cognitive functions are limited to that of several bricks with some cement in-between. I dislike taxes 'cus WRAGLWAAAAAAAARGL!
You have a habit of oversimplifying just about everything. Taxes are one aspect, but it's not just a lump sum of spending if that spending may be beneficial. It can be an argument of how the money is used. The FDA can also control and suppress what we can and can not put into our bodies. It encourages lobbying to occur and the approval process is hardly unbiased. Should their reach go beyond just drugs and foods and into the realm of vitamins and supplements too?
What we need is a watchdog. What we don't need is a taxpayer funded monopoly that is influenced by special interests.
There are two distinct libertarian motivations: one is the conviction that the free market will do everything better without intervention; the other is the conviction that although government intervention may be beneficial on the whole, it still amounts to a morally impermissible form of coercion. You can believe one but not the other, or, as you appear to, both.
Unfortunately, the idea that taxation is morally impermissible coercion is retarded and I can only offhand think of one well-regarded academic who has written in defense of the idea. Robert Nozick, for the folks at home. Just about everyone else in ethics seems to come down on the other side of the issue.
So, how about that Steele character?
Hell, what's stopping the people/companies the watchdog needs to be watching from setting up just such a group as a rubber stamp since they're the ones with the money and the motivation to do so?
Because the free market is 100% perfect and good. Duh.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Oh, wait...
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Defend that the USDA and FDA are even useful, regardless of how much money we waste on them, when tragedies like this still inevitably slip through the cracks.
I recognize that public goods can exist and that society as a whole can experience a net benefit from government programs.
Notwithstanding that, it costs so much money just to do the research to plan public programs correctly that we usually blunder into them ineffectually, often causing too much or too little of a good to be produced relative to the true cost society must bear when it creates and maintains near-permanent, ineffective bureaucracies that have little incentive to do their job and every incentive to fight each other for pork spending.
The burden of proof ought to be on politicians to show that a given program is publicly necessary AND that we are capable of tackling the situation effectively; rarely are either of these conditions even addressed.
If the market will inevitably create such a watchdog, then why didn't it? We got the FDA because of public outrage over ongoing contamination and health risks. Wiki:
If you think that the market can prevent that sort of thing now, then you'd have to explain what the salient differences are between now and then.
Because Bush deregulated the FDA and made them virtually powerless! The peanut butter outbreak was his last free market gift to the American people before he walked out the door! Fuck
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
Isn't that how half the "organic accreditation" companies work now? Hell, movie studios and other industries (which I can't for the life of me remember) get reviewed and endorsed by in-house outfits.
Steele is a neocon, he gets no love from the liberty community. He and the current incarnation of the GOP deserve each other.
*company knowingly sells tainted product for years*
*FDA & CDC tracks large outbreak to company selling tainted product, shuts down plants and moves to criminally penalize them*
*company decares bankruptcy in wake of shutdowns and recalls*
Hur dur, looks like the free market found a way to me! *posts link to the PCA's website*
See also: the nice folks who rate bonds.
Pluto was a planet and I'll never forget
Murders will inevitably happen, so let's go ahead and get rid of police as well. Foreign countries -- particularly adversaries -- will inevitably succeed in keeping at least a few secrets from our government, so abolish the NSA and CIA as well. Because obviously, if a government agency cannot do its job flawlessly for all eternity, it's worthless.
The thing is, his job is to rebuild the Republican coalition. Being able to do so means he can keep his job. Libertarians (capital L) may not be huge fans of his, but they're a better place to start than virtually anywhere else.
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
You give it to me presimplified, dude, in the form of pie-in-the-sky imaginary private organizations that you never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever describe in any detail how they would work or where their coercive authority would come from. Give me a detailed, cited position paper about Magic Regulatory Non-Government Body That Keeps People From Dying and I will happily give you the meaty body blows you crave.
This all sounds like an argument for greater transparency rather than an entirely different scheme altogether. Look, this isn't like buying a lemontastic car or a crappy DVD player. If you put e coli or carcinogens in your body you're already fucked, so it makes sense to put our focus on lengthy pre-release testing and on-site inspection rather than hoping that the threat of class-action lawsuits after the fact will keep companies honest on their own.
(Incidentally, we already know that doesn't work, since with criminal and civil liability at stake companies still make the conscious choice to harm their consumers - what on earth makes you think a private agency or the threat of suits will be sufficient on their own?)
EDIT: this will be my last post on the subject. We now return to SLUM LOVE , already in progress.
Wars, too. Those will inevitably happen, so let's abolish the military and rely solely on private militias.
Oh wait, I forgot, the military is the only thing taxes are allowed to pay for!
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
I would approve of this heartily, because when libertarianism becomes the topic I hate that the government guarantees freedom of speech to everyone.
He also ignored my edit pointing out that it was the government that figured out that it was that plant's products that were causing the sickness, so the company couldn't have done anything without the government.
If there was anyone who could help pull the Republican party out of its mess right now, Steele isn't it.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Granted I think that particular comment was from Bachmann, not Steele, but it's a pretty good illustration of the type of dismally ignorant strategy they've been playing with for the last few months.
I don't know - they all seem like buffons to me.
I guess there is perhaps a degree or level of buffon-ness each one of them holds, but a buffon's as buffonish as a buffon will be a buffon.
Great. ToTP.
XBL Gametag: mailarde
Screen Digest LOL3RZZ
Run GOP?
They tried to bury us. They didn't know that we were seeds. 2018 Midterms. Get your shit together.
So I just don't see the GOP reinventing itself from the bottom up - the libertarians could, but they're a minority and they could just as easily bolt. The avenue I see for the party is some authoritative, charismatic figure - someone from private industry or possibly the military, with deep pockets and no prior political experience - emerging and sort of stepping forward and pulling the sword from the stone. If the move was bold and audacious enough I can honestly see the party falling into line behind them.