Libertarian Islands?

[ImprobableJoe]

Atlas shrugged or a communist paradise?

Ever listened to a libertarian and a communist? They use different words, but they describe the same fantasy.

Did you ever listen to the things we post here? I know for a fact that I label libertarian stupidity under the same umbrella as socialist/communist stupidity, because it is all the same Utopian delusion. So how do you deal with the fact that people who reject your stupid ideas also reject other stupid ideas that you think justify your idiotic views?

 

[impiku]

Atlas shrugged or a communist paradise?

Ever listened to a libertarian and a communist? They use different words, but they describe the same fantasy.

Not all libertarians are Rand-tards. Also, libertarianism doesn't suffer from incentive problems like communism.

 

[Anachronous Rex]

Atlas shrugged or a communist paradise?

Ever listened to a libertarian and a communist? They use different words, but they describe the same fantasy.

Not all libertarians are Rand-tards.

To paraphrase you: That is not the common attitude of Libertarians.

Do you see why it's a fallacy now? Quite irritating when other people start misrepresenting your stance, isn't it?

 

[impiku]

Are you accusing me of setting up strawman arguments, Barney the purple dinosaur?

 

[ImprobableJoe]

I'm sort of sick to tears of libertarians whining about how their stupid philosophy is given a bad rap by other libertarians, and if only we'd give them a chance they could show that their philosophy isn't really stupid and the rest of them are doing it wrong. The problem is, we're basing our view of libertarianism on the words and actions of people who are members of the Libertarian Party, that party's platform, and the way that libertarians of any note in society actually behave in real life.

It would be like someone coming here and saying "well, I'm a Catholic and it is unfair that you keep saying mean things about the Roman Catholic Church, because I don't believe in all those things that the Pope and the Cardinals and the Bishops say, and I don't believe all the stuff in the Bible that sounds bad to modern folks." The problem isn't me saying things about Catholicism that aren't true, the problem is that you've got a strange definition of "Catholic" that is meaningless and useless when having discussions with other people.

Or, maybe you really aren't a Catholic/libertarian at all, and you're using the wrong word to describe yourself.

 

[kenandkids]

Or, maybe you really aren't a Catholic/libertarian at all, and you're using the wrong word to describe yourself.

+1




If one finds oneself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to explain how the majority of one's group isn't representative of one's views, one isn't likely a member of said group.

 

[impiku]

I'm pretty sure that objectivism is dying, and the majority of libertarians are not objectivists.

I noticed that people who are basing their understanding of a particular political philosophy on parties, view politics like sports.

..and no, consequentialist libertarianism is not "strange" segment of libertarianism, even I have never stumbled across a dumbass liberal saying that libertarians like Hayek and Friedman have a "strange" notion of libertarianism. The only likely explanation for this is that you don't know what you are talking about(which is vindicated by almost every comment you poopoo on political matters), and should actually learn instead. You are just rationalizing your own ignorance.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

If one finds oneself spending an inordinate amount of time trying to explain how the majority of one's group isn't representative of one's views, one isn't likely a member of said group.

In my experience, many online "libertarians" are really civil libertarians, progressives with an emphasis on marijuana legalization, and/or they lack a basic understanding of the underpinnings of society.

It isn't just a libertarian problem either. In America, very few people self-identify as "liberal". Most Americans support Social Security and Medicare and other social spending programs, they want the troops to come home from the Middle East, they like the public education their kids are getting, they want taxes raised on the top 1-2%, they want strong regulation on the financial sector, less outsourcing of jobs, strong protection of the environment, gay marriage legalized... on just about every issue, at least a slim majority of Americans are pretty fucking liberal and don't even know it!

 

[televator]

Arizona has a fair share of the "anti-vacs" variety. Makes for an easy wedge topic. :twisted:

 

[ohcac]

ImprobableJoe unleashes such a fast torrent of rhetoric against my position of libertarianism, that I hardly know where to begin. Let's discuss, post by post, only dealing with material that is mostly argumentative:

Imagine now what a libertarian sees. He sees a completed building. He doesn't see the labor of tens of thousands of people. He assumes that the building has always existed, and that he could build one better. Build one without all the scaffolding, and support structures, all the tarps, all the inspectors and experts, never mind the removal of dirt and scrap and "wasted" parts that are part of the construction process. He sees the building as a Lego set, where the construction requires only the parts and people that are left in the building. He thinks he can build a better building for cheaper, because he can do without all those extras like scaffolding and construction workers, experts and designers and inspectors, painters and plumbers and all the rest.

I found it somewhat hard to tell what this analogy was about, but I think I have sort of an idea as to what he is getting at here. Please correct me if I am wrong, but I think this is what is meant (phrased neutrally): ImprobableJoe and libertarians both see an entity called society. What ImprobableJoe seems to claim here is that a Libertarian is blind to what makes the infrastructure of a society tick. What does he offer to support this assertion? Within this post, nothing. ImprobableJoe, in all the posts that I have seen him put up on this board, has never even outlined a genuine libertarian position and then proceeded to point out fallacies he has perceived with them.

The implication seems to be that libertarians think that society will order *by magic*, because without a central planning mechanism instituted by a governmental body, things would deteriorate. However, ImprobableJoe's rhetoric (as well as the rhetoric of nearly everyone else here) is so inflammatory that he cannot even seem to assess ideas in any manner deeper than a cursory, insulting, unbacked assertion. In order to assess the idea properly, you must first think to yourself that perhaps it is possible that libertarians *do* try to "find the workers and experts and designers and plumbers" of society in a different place. You just happen to think that the concrete manifestation of the "workers and experts and designers and plumbers" of society is to be found in governmental establishment, central planning, and progressive regulation; and libertarians disagree, instead claiming that the infrastructure of society at large lies in human innovation and research, free markets, competition driven incentive. Libertarians also stake the claim that central planning, progressive regulation, and governmental establishment are antithetical to what makes the infrastructure of society run.

Now, this is an outline of the differences between standard libertarian and standard non-libertarian thinking. Now, a rational person would carefully assess the merits and consequences of the previously discussed entities (governmental establishment, central planning, progressive regulation, human innovation and research, free markets, competition driven incentives, et cetera) and see, as precisely as possible, how each contributes or counteracts advances in societal infrastructure. ImprobableJoe, on the other hand, merely makes veiled insults and bad analogies that amount to mere assertions. So does nearly every other person on this "discussion" board.

It is possible that I am being unfair, and that ImprobableJoe has already discussed this in-depth elsewhere, has already rationally assessed this issue in accordance with the rational procedure given above. However, there is strong evidence that suggests that he hasn't; for instance, the following gem of an "argument":

Did you ever listen to the things we post here? I know for a fact that I label libertarian stupidity under the same umbrella as socialist/communist stupidity, because it is all the same Utopian delusion. So how do you deal with the fact that people who reject your stupid ideas also reject other stupid ideas that you think justify your idiotic views?

This is an elementary cop-out that labels libertarianism as a "utopian ideology"; which, in political science, amounts to placing a mark of death on an idea. I have heard this ad-nauseum from every political ideology to every political ideology (except for Marxism/Maoism, which actually does claim to be a successful path to utopia). Otherwise, any alternative suggestion that says "things would be better if..." is given the label "UTOPIAN!!! OH NO!!!" if it contains any elements dependent in any way on voluntary human action. One could say that the government is "utopian" because of it's naive presumption that extracting taxes by force, regulating complex markets via painfully slow legislation, and selecting people to preside over land the size of the United States with a popularity contest that suffers from the free-rider problem is a good way to establish the infrastructure of a society.

Now, I want to get to some *actual* discussion by asking a series of questions. You may answer them if you want, or explain why you think they are irrelevant or misleading, or whatever. All I have seen on these boards is unsubstantive, veiled insults against libertarianism. So let's get into the meat of the discussion and duke it out. If you want to, I challenge everybody here to answer the following questions to the best of their ability:

1) What do you think "libertarian" means?
2) What is your opinion of totally free, unregulated markets, and precisely why are they a positive or negative thing? WHY?
3) Is the state a necessary entity? Why or why not?
4) Are government programs generally positive or negative? WHY?
5) What is more important in building and maintaining the infrastructure of society: free markets and competition driven incentive or centrally planned and progressively regulated organization? Perhaps something entirely different? WHY?
6) What do you think of public education? Is it positive or negative? WHY?
7) What do you think of the current situation of the world at present? What is your perspective on how the world has gotten this way? WHY?

I don't mean to cop-out of giving my perspectives on these questions but it is currently almost 1 in the morning where I am, and I have to wake up early for a mathematics course. I *promise* that if I haven't answered these questions by the end of Thursday, you are justified in calling me out on it.

 

[Aught3]

I challenge everybody here to answer the following questions to the best of their ability:

Obviously all of these are huge questions so I will just give a short reply to each.

1) What do you think "libertarian" means?
As an ethical philosophy libertarian means we have a fundamental right to do whatever we like with the things we own (including ourselves - self ownership) and we have the duty to respect other people's rights to do the same.
As a political philosophy libertarianism implies things like no paternalism (the individual has the right not to, for example, wear a seat-belt), no legislation of morality (prostitution may be morally objectionable but consenting adults should still be allowed to engage in it), and no welfare for the less fortunate (people have the right to decide what to do with their wealth).

2) What is your opinion of totally free, unregulated markets, and precisely why are they a positive or negative thing? WHY?
They are a positive thing in that they can organise resources very efficiently but negative in their failure to account for externalities and ability to drive incentives in the wrong direction. Overall I am for removing market forces in certain areas but keeping regulated markets in place for most goods and services.

3) Is the state a necessary entity? Why or why not?
Probably not. I think people could form smaller communities and organise themselves efficiently through various councils and the like. Not sure that I would prefer this outcome of course, but it is possible.

4) Are government programs generally positive or negative? WHY?
I can think of single examples that go either way but if I just think of the big ones - healthcare, education, welfare, pensions - I would say generally positive because of the beneficial outcomes they produce. Providing health, education, and basic necessities to all citizens is a big positive in my book.

5) What is more important in building and maintaining the infrastructure of society: free markets and competition driven incentive or centrally planned and progressively regulated organization? Perhaps something entirely different? WHY?
Certainly the second or at least a variation on the second. Most examples I can think of roads, water, electricity, telecommunications, etc the basic infrastructures are built and maintained by governments not the private sector. Certainly there are some exceptions, but they are exceptions not the rule.

6) What do you think of public education? Is it positive or negative? WHY?
Generally positive. Everybody needs to be educated so they don't grow up to be ignorant. Enough said.

7) What do you think of the current situation of the world at present? What is your perspective on how the world has gotten this way? WHY?
Holy crap, what a question! Mostly harmless, I would say. I suppose my big worry at the moment is climate change and trying to get the historic polluters like the US and the current king of smog China to take responsibility and show leadership over the issue. It is hard to get the world to co-operate when it is composed of so many different countries each with its own agenda and each unwilling to be the first to compromise. I like the idea of the UN council but it hasn't really worked out in practice.

 

[Prolescum]

1) I know exactly what libertarianism is, however, few libertarians do, which is where the problem surfaces. Also, given your attack on ImprobableJoe and your stated libertarian bent, the sub-text to this question is bordering on a no true Scotsman...

That said, coming from Americans, it's almost always along the lines of... "This is mine. Weally, it's all mine. You can't touch it because it's mine. Don't twy to steal fwom me, mr gubbmint man. Also, don't weguwate stuff, it's against my wights, MY WIGHTS! No, wights awen't gwanted by gobbmints, they... they... er... Fwee mawkets awe bettah becoz gubbmint ain't involved, don't steal mr gubbmint man, taxes are theft. I'll bild me own roads, won't need hospitals or a emewgensy sewvice like fiermen or powice men. I can buy my own pwotection fwom fugs and I ain't stupid enough to set my own stuff on fier. Safety weguwations are dumb. I don't need to take anywun else into confidewation, It's my wight to do what I want. MY WIGHT!!! I'm Amewican goddamit, the constitution guawantees me wights! No, wait, the gubbmint upholds taht. It's natuwal wights! I'll pay fow a pwivate skool coz I'll still have money. No, gubbmint don't need any say in money I use gold that I get from... Stop steawing my wights, you commie bawsteds! No I don't need sewers or akwaducks, bwidges, powerlines or taps. I'll buy water fwom the gang that will own the ex-gubbmint faciwity wiv mah gold which I will definitewy have."

The only reason libertarians aren't killed on sight is because society frowns upon murder, and the laws provided keep them relatively cushioned from what would otherwise be a regular occurrence. Being a libertarian yourself, I probably have to explain that the previous sentence was a joke.

2) They are a pipe dream. They are destructive. Government regulation (or the threat of it) stops businesses from, for example, forming monopolies. When one group controls, say, the water supply, they invariably abuse that control. No patent system, no way to protect your ideas from being stolen; no copyrights, your works can be used, sold, reworked without your consent; no trademarks, people can pretend to be your organisation. No regulation over what can and cannot be sold as fit for human consumption - were there no regulation (as it was for a substantial part of history, up to and including the twentieth century), contaminated (naturally, industrially, whatever) consumables enter the food chain. Don't want creutzfeldt-jakob disease? You must have standards, and someone to make sure they are followed. No protection (or provision) for employees, physically or fiscally. The list goes on, but I don't have all day.

3) Yes, for the same reasons outlined above.

4) Depends what you mean by "government programs". The army is a government program.

5) You don't need "free" markets to provide competition-driven incentive, this question is spurious.

6) It is a positive. The benefits of education are self-evident; without a general curriculum applied consistently, you will have an underclass of thickos with divergent understanding. Which, I suppose, is of benefit to free market capitalists; an ignorant workforce is an easily manipulated one.

7) Messy. The struggle to lift our societies out of poverty, destitution and abuse at the hands of a few has been a long and hard-fought battle that is not yet complete. I'll be fucking damned if I let it revert to the barely civilised fiefdoms of old, as proposed by many libertarians.
Also, your question is framed in such a way as to suggest we've taken the wrong path, to which you will, no doubt, offer a solution. Thought it worth noting...

If you want a rather astute view of capitalism, go read some Marx.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Libertarian crybaby writes a super-long post that doesn't do anything substantive besides whine that he doesn't like my post without presenting anything of value, and asking questions.

I've noticed that most libertarians like to play this game where they make few claims, cry about strawmen, and think they've won a discussion that they have never actually entered into

ohcac: you're the libertarian. Answer your own fucking questions.

 

[Prolescum]

Also, protip for libertarians in general:

Asinine is a pretty useless adjective, and does not form an effective argument. You might think it makes you seem clever, but on the contrary, its use points visibly to edumacation on-the-fly by Google. With masterclasses via Yahoo answers.

Jus' sayin'.

 

[ImprobableJoe]

Also, protip for libertarians in general:

Asinine is a pretty useless adjective, and does not form an effective argument. You might think it makes you seem clever, but on the contrary, its use points visibly to edumacation on-the-fly by Google. With masterclasses via Yahoo answers.

Jus' sayin'.

LOL

But yeah, you've got it pegged with the "no true Scotsman" thing. Lie-bertarians (see what I did there? :lol: ) like to complain about the way they are described, yet they rarely present their views in a straight-ahead, honest, and clear manner. They lie and avoid and deceive and duck and dodge. They love to say how everyone else is getting it wrong, but they rarely bother to set us straight. They call names and spout irrelevant catch phrases, but not much else.

 

[televator]

Just sayin'?

Now, this is an outline of the differences between standard libertarian and standard non-libertarian thinking. Now, a rational person would carefully assess the merits and consequences of the previously discussed entities (governmental establishment, central planning, progressive regulation, human innovation and research, free markets, competition driven incentives, et cetera) and see, as precisely as possible, how each contributes or counteracts advances in societal infrastructure. ImprobableJoe, on the other hand, merely makes veiled insults and bad analogies that amount to mere assertions. So does nearly every other person on this "discussion" board.

Yes, yes....and I'm sure all "standard libertarian thinkers" are also very attractive and muscular, aside from being endowed with uncanny rationality. Unlike the rest of us in the unwashed, ugly, diseased, irrational, non-libertarian masses. :roll:

1) Anarchy. Whether it's for small government or no government it's ultimately a call for a larger element of anarchy in society to a dangerous degree.

2) Totally free, unregulated markets are to be had at the expense of the public well being. Poisoned food killed you. Free market will take care of it? I've already heard arguments from libertarians on this, and they haven't been satisfactory so far.

3) In what context? I'm not willing to say that it is always necessary for it to be present in every part of your life. That would be a dubiously absolute statement. So I'll default to an "IDK stance" in light of the broad question.

4) Gov programs can be generally positive. Many of them are and were even better before corporate influence in the US.

5) The second one, because -- at the very least -- if you simply let private entities plunder and pollute the surrounding resources, there would be a corrosive element in society that can very well overwhelm any progress that the larger general populace can benefit from.

6) I probably wouldn't be here reading and typing if it weren't for public education.

7) Situations concerning the entire Earth? Then I'd have to concur with Aught's environmental concerns at the top. How has it gotten this way? I suppose a lack of environmental regulations and enforcement had something to do with it.... Aside from that, there's the exploding human population

 

[ohcac]

Libertarian crybaby writes a super-long post that doesn't do anything substantive besides whine that he doesn't like my post without presenting anything of value, and asking questions.

I've noticed that most libertarians like to play this game where they make few claims, cry about strawmen, and think they've won a discussion that they have never actually entered into

ohcac: you're the libertarian. Answer your own fucking questions.

Calm down, dude. I merely asked the questions to promote more discussion and give a take-off platform for a more detailed and fruitful discussion. I didn't formulate these questions as part of a therapy session for myself, I merely wanted to coax some opinions out on the table so I could give my assessment, and then see people's opinions about my assessment. If you don't want to answer the questions, then you have no obligation to. I am antagonizing you in particular, Joe, because you only have veiled insults and sweeping generalizations about the behavior of libertarians to offer.

Aught3 gave a wonderful, concise formulation of his opinions about my questions. It wasn't a treatise, but it gave me a framework for which to compare my thoughts to his. The responses of Prolescum and televator were harsh and even showed some contempt for my position, but I can say that their posts are worth reflecting on because they have argumentative substance. I asked the questions because I am genuinely interested in whether my position is correct and whether I have any potential prejudices against other valid perspectives. I am looking for people, most of whom on this board will disagree with me, to form an *argument* where they lay out *reasons* as to why they think I am wrong. Your posts, on the other hand, may as well have just called me a "big, fat poopybutt" without any other content.

I felt I needed to put this defense in real quick. My response post to my questions will be up by Thursday afternoon, if not sooner. I am still thinking about the current answers to the questions and typing it on notepad.

 

[ohcac]

Just sayin'?

Now, this is an outline of the differences between standard libertarian and standard non-libertarian thinking. Now, a rational person would carefully assess the merits and consequences of the previously discussed entities (governmental establishment, central planning, progressive regulation, human innovation and research, free markets, competition driven incentives, et cetera) and see, as precisely as possible, how each contributes or counteracts advances in societal infrastructure. ImprobableJoe, on the other hand, merely makes veiled insults and bad analogies that amount to mere assertions. So does nearly every other person on this "discussion" board.

Yes, yes....and I'm sure all "standard libertarian thinkers" are also very attractive and muscular, aside from being endowed with uncanny rationality. Unlike the rest of us in the unwashed, ugly, diseased, irrational, non-libertarian masses. :roll:

Also, a quick note on the segment of my post that seemed *really* condescending: The highlighted part of the quotation you put in was referring to the previous paragraph, which if you look, actually does lay out some *neutrally worded* differences between libertarian and non-libertarian thinking. I promise you that this sentence has no contribution to the polemic against ImprobableJoe that immediately follows. :lol:

 

[ohcac]

I held off as long as I could so that I wouldn't triple post, but I promised a response to *my questions* by Thursday, here is the response:

Okay, a couple of posts have been issued in response to my questions. People seem to think that these are huge questions, and they are. However, brief responses are okay because this discussion, instead of being a medium for throwing shit, is now a medium of formulating serious opinions and examining them in a critical way. Here are my own answers to these questions:

1) A libertarian is somebody who believes that individual freedom constitutes the fundamental principle for a free society. The implications of this philosophy typically mean a minimization of the state as much as possible, promotion of less regulated market exchange, and less taxation; to name but a few. I believe that
Aught3 is essentially correct in his definition to my estimation. Prolescum, on the other hand, gave a stupid answer, as any retard can strawman the shit out of their opponents position while pretending to talk like a baby.

2) There are some objections with free markets that are understandable, and some objections that are totally false. The "monopoly" objection is borderline ridiculous: it lacks a viable mechanism for natural monopoly formation; the mechanisms for free market "monopoly" breaking are too numerous to count; etc. And it also treats the government almost naively as an enemy of corporatism. Usually when a crisis is blamed on the "free market" it is usually due to corporatism and protectionism of said industry. For example, when BP fucked up in the Gulf, almost everyone saw this as evidence that the government was necessary for crackdown intervention. However, looking at the situation more closely reveals that the government had incentivized risk with stupid legislation. For example, the density and number of oil rigs on the gulf was vastly increased when Bush Sr. signed a law restricting drilling to be west of the border between Alabama and Mississippi in 1990, and this was extended by Clinton in 1998 until 2012. Clinton also signed the Deepwater Royalty Relief Act (DWRRA) into law (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Water_Royalty_Relief_Act) which gave oil rigs and natural gas companies *five-fold* incentive to drill in ambiguous deep waters than in easily accessible shallow waters via royalty relief. In fact, there is a $75 million liability cap by law for oil companies!!! (http://www.businessinsider.com/criminal-charges-are-very-likely-in-oil-case-so-you-can-forget-about-the-75-million-liabilities-cap-2010-5).

What objections are more sound? For one thing, the "externalities" argument: An externality is a case when the costs and benefits of activities affect third parties. These can be positive or negative, and an example of a negative externality would be heavy pollution, and there are countless examples that are easy to think of. However, all that externalities prove is that property rights need to be enforced. This could be dealt with via liability suits; and potentially in a court of polycentric law without a state (which I have a slight problem with, but it is just an option on the table). What I dislike is the justification for egregious public policy recommendations that seek to "make up" external costs.

The word "free" as you can see above doesn't really mean "free" in the sense of "do whatever the hell you want"; but "operate under a code of fair private property rights".

3) I do not think it is necessary *per se* (i'll explain). Aught3 stated his opinion that conglomerations of smaller communities could be a viable alternative to a state, although he doesn't prefer it. If he did prefer it, he could be labeled a "confederal socialist" (no relation to the CSA). I believe that the state is a harmful entity that obtains its resources with violent coercion (actually, it is a fact that states obtain their resources via coercion, the question is whether this is "bad" or not). I also happen to be of the opinion that the claim that the state holds over vast quantities of land that are actually mostly empty and mostly undeveloped land is dubious at best and completely unfounded at worse. Now, ImprobableJoe has stated that there is no merit to the claim that taxation is theft; I disagree. I would assert that taxation is *not* a fundamental base for society, taxes are almost *never* used wisely, especially in a country with a lot of wealth generation (probably because they are simply extracted "at will"), and taxes are ultimately extracted at gunpoint on the fringes. I would delve into government programs, as they are the very entities that , but that is question #4. EDIT: I originally deferred the continuation of this to question 4, but then decided that it was too loaded of a question. However, I do discuss numerous other government programs and implicitly state my beliefs about them.

As a side note, I do believe that fundamentally cohesive and truly communal human interaction cannot take place with numbers of people greater than approximately 250-300 people. Why? There is a number called "Dunbar's unit", the natural amount of people that form true communities. By studying anthropological data on tribal size and conducting cognitive studies, the "Dunbar number" has been estimated at a high of about 400 people and at a low of about 150 people. It is my opinion that states often garner ideological support by drawing on this communal element and then convincing people that it projects onto the state (Hitler Youth is an extreme example of this; whilst in the United States, we have the "What does the United States mean to you?" propaganda. I am not sure to what extent this sort of opportunism has taken place in other countries, but I have a feeling that this is the primary method of bolstering strong nationalism)

While I am a libertarian, I have reservations about calling myself an anti-statist because of a couple of very difficult problems that are unsolved to the best of my judgement: 1)The "free rider" problem of national defense, and 2) polycentric law. I will discuss these in more detail at a later point

4) This was a bad question, way to broad to even bite into. I would obviously say mostly bad but we would have to pick one to go off of. The details and logistics of each program can wildly vary. I will say that to my estimation, central planning mechanisms suffer from epistemic problems very badly and some heavily revered programs (i.e. the New Deal) are bigger failures than are often acknowledged.

5) I understand all of your responses to this question. The collective arguments I have heard on this topic are (in paraphrase):

Aught3: "Much of the basic infrastructure of society is managed by central planning and progressive regulation, including roads, water, electricity, and telecommunications"

I will certainly look into whether telecommunications, water, and electricity advancements are as derived from centrally planned and regulated mechanisms as is implied. I actually laughed out loud when Prolescum mockingly typed "I'll bild me own roads" as if it was some batshit crazy idea to do so. Then we have televator's brief response. Your scenario is all purely hypothetical stuff (at least I think it is, unless you have a more detailed reason for believing this would happen?), and the only thing I could offer against it is more hypothetical stuff that couldn't be examined with any potency. However, there are a few elements of this that *can* be. These sort of things are often deemed to be "necessary" via a ham-fisted analysis and then everybody is forced to pay for them. Being forced by coercion to pay for a service you may potentially never use is convoluted to me for the vast majority of offer-able services, with the exception of *maybe* (and that's a huge maybe) services that suffer from the free rider problem (one of which is firefighting/law enforcement; although this could potentially be resolved by being able to choose neighborhoods that don't provide these services; the other of which is national defense, which is probably the biggest problem facing the "anti-state" brand of libertarianism). What is even worse than paying for unwanted and unneeded services is having the claim that you *endorse* the services if you happen to use them at any time. This is akin to having someone steal your wallet in the middle of the night, and then proceed to buy you a cheeseburger. When you yell at him for paying for this service without permission, and then proceed to eat the cheeseburger now that you have it, he then starts laughing at how you "endorsed" the theft of your wallet because you are using the service he "provided" to you.
6)Public education. I do agree that *education* is a good thing. However, I do *not* believe that it should be compulsory, and that people can and will be as ignorant as they want to be with or without compulsory education. Many people will try and point to the "efficiency" of public schooling in terms of how many people it "educates", without even giving a thought to the fact that the curriculum is dumbed down in pure content, has too many requirements that stretch the high school graduation period of almost everybody, largely ignores gifted students, focuses on time management *almost entirely* over topical proficiency, and I have also noticed that the grading system fosters permanent lack of proficiency once again by focusing on a component of time management. http://simplecomplexity.net/education-achievement-data/ and many, many other studies that examine the same statistics indicate that public education spending has *no correlation at all* to test scores stretching back to 1970.
There is also a more general problem with public education that has to do with the fact that large segments of it have to follow fixed pedagogical standards. Now, pedagogical standard *in and of themselves* are not the thing I am arguing against. What I mean to argue is that many stupid trends are enforced at large scales. For example, the standardization of "whole-word reading" over the superior "phonics" system resulted in the deadening of the vocabulary of countless millions of students. In mathematics, pure mathematicians usually have little influence over what children should be taught about understanding the fundamentals of mathematics. And guess what? It's *fucking obvious*. Although you may run into a teacher that truly teaches good mathematics (the *only* one at my school was the calculus teacher), rote-memorization is incentivized by poorly standardized curricula that are universally enforced. I don't need to tell you guys about the ID movement, although the courts *did* shoot it down, but only because it was in obvious violation of the federal constitution. The fact remains that a poisonous pedagogical fad doesn't have to be illegal to be shitty.
These are the problems with the *educational* component that I perceive. I have an even bigger problem with the environmental aspect of it: a Prussian model of schooling (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussian_education_system) that usually involves a "one size fits all" lecture is implemented (as well as the caveat that it was originally produced to enforce obedience to the Prussian state). Students are forced into a poisonous social environment where children are marched from one class to the next without having any of their genuine preferences acknowledged. In other words, children are *bullied* by school administrations to an incredible extent. My friends and I drew up some simple calculations showing that 39-45% of the waking hours of the students in the high school I attended (a very normal, public high school that had similar hours to every state in my district). This is *a ton* of hours for a 16-18 year old, especially considering the lax quality of education, but now think about how we have *6 and 7 year olds* spending the same amount of time and likely a higher percentage of waking hours than more physically capable high-schoolers!
7) I would like to answer this, but my post is too long as it is and it was a *loaded* question in retrospect : :lol:

 

[Prolescum]

I've put it in spoiler tags for those who don't want to read a long-ish response. Lazy sods.

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Edited. Damn typos.
Edit: Gagh!