[quote]kamui wrote:
why ?[/quote]
Because without a plan you cannot work, the best you can hope to achieve is to aimlessly wander around and burn calories.
If you actually have a plan you need tools which are nothing if not ideas made flesh.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:Sounds like a religious hating liberal. Hmmm…[/quote]Nonesense. I think you mean “a religious liberal hating”.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
why ?[/quote]
Because without a plan you cannot work, the best you can hope to achieve is to aimlessly wander around and burn calories.
If you actually have a plan you need tools which are nothing if not ideas made flesh.
[/quote]
ok, let’s keep this socratic :
you just told me why ideas are important. But even someone as stupid as myself already know that.
you need to explain me why ideas are “the most important part”, compared to every other part. You need to explain me how you weight “importance”.
[quote]kamui wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]kamui wrote:
why ?[/quote]
Because without a plan you cannot work, the best you can hope to achieve is to aimlessly wander around and burn calories.
If you actually have a plan you need tools which are nothing if not ideas made flesh.
[/quote]
ok, let’s keep this socratic :
you just told me why ideas are important. But even someone as stupid as myself already know that.
you need to explain me why ideas are “the most important part”, compared to every other part. You need to explain me how you weight “importance”.
[/quote]
relative scarcity?
relative scarcity of ideas ? what do you mean ?
it takes only a few words to reproduce an idea. Actually, nothing is easier to reproduce than an idea.
And There’s nothing harder to destroy than an idea.
How can they be rare ?
[quote]kamui wrote:
relative scarcity of ideas ? what do you mean ?
it takes only a few words to reproduce an idea. Actually, nothing is easier to reproduce than an idea.
And There’s nothing harder to destroy than an idea.
How can they be rare ? [/quote]
They are hard to come up with, compared to other factors of production.
ok. fair enough.
but after that, these useful ideas can easily be shared with hundred of people.
Their scarcity drop exponentially, so their values and their prices should drop expontentially too.
but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
why ?
[quote]kamui wrote:
ok. fair enough.
but after that, these useful ideas can easily be shared with hundred of people.
Their scarcity drop exponentially, so their values and their prices should drop expontentially too.
but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
why ?
[/quote]
It would seem that someone with charisma,leadership, drive and vision would actually be the guy we were talking about. No?
[quote]kilpaba wrote:
People would act badly as they do now dead certain. It is simply people assume that these instances are far more prevalent than they in fact are, so why trade freedom for marginal (if any at all) attempts to eradicate these already fairly rare instances? [/quote]
Well, this is simply untrue. People act bad all the time - it’s plenty prevalent, and the idea that these instances are “fairly rare” is, in a word, naive.
All of the badness referred to in my post to JEATON does implicate both physical violence and property violations. Of course it does - why would someone engage in graft or influence peddling if they weren’t trying to gain someone’s property either directly or indirectly?
And regurgitation of the libertarian’s brochure - the “third party aggression and trampling of liberty” - is just blather. Folks don’t peaceably sort their own stuff out - that’s the point. When people have a property dispute, they rarely sort it out on their own.
Now, again, I don’t know where you personally would draw the lines on where government just start and stop - but that was never my point. My point was directed at the Ayn Rand program for society, which is a bunch of nonsense predicated on an expected materialist utopia once we demolish our social institutions and customs that hold the productive class back and cull the leeches from society (using a broad category for leeches, the “unproductive”), we can liberate ourselves into the perfect world.
It’s dumb. It’s unrealistic. It’s adolescent. And it is foreign to the political philosophy that has made this country so great. Not just kinda foreign - very foreign.
Not necessarily - depends on the vices, and it depends on what freedoms were being restricted.
You’re right. Here’s the short version.
I’m not a libertarian, never have been. I used to think more highly of them, now I don’t. Over time, I’ve come to realize that libertarians have far more in common with left-wing ideology and radicalism (in terms of assumptions of human nature, relationship between man and state, etc.) than classical liberalism or conservatism. In fact, I think in large part, go far enough down the road, and libertarians and conservatives are natural enemies.
Why? Because libertarianism is the handmaiden of the overarching nanny-state that conservatives want to hold at bay. Libertarians don’t get this, and it is an unintened consequence of their ideology, but it is no less true.
Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled.
I’ve posted this before recently, and it fits this thread:
To me this question whether liberty is a good or a bad thing appears as irrational as the question whether fire is a good or a bad thing. It is both good and bad according to time, place, and circumstance. - James Fitzjames Stephen
To your other questions: I think religion is important, and I think no decent society can operate without a hummus of a believing people, but I do not identify with the Christian Right nor consider myself in their ranks. I am not a member of the Republican Party and actually have a number of substantive disagreements with its platform, but I typically vote GOP at the national level because the national urban Democratic Party is an embarrassment.
EDIT: underlined, changed “with” to “without” (typo).
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:<<< libertarianism is the handmaiden of the overarching nanny-state that conservatives want to hold at bay. Libertarians don’t get this, and it is an unintened consequence of their ideology, but it is no less true. >>>[/quote]This is so clearly and obviously true that it astonishes me that seemingly otherwise intelligent individuals do not see it chomping on their nose. [quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:<<< Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled. >>>[/quote]Very VERY good indeed though they won’t get it right away and will deny it once it’s explained.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled. [/quote]
For this sentence I am willing to overlook the rest of your post.
I am fascinated though that you think that liberty can and should be sacrificed to achieve other goals of the state and then decry libertarians as the intellectual torch holders of liberals.
Somewhere in there is the actual assumption that once on you compromise on libertzy to achieve other ends it will stop with the conservative agenda.
What it in effect does however is that conservatives start to logroll with liberals so that they can achieve their agenda which leaves us with a welfare-warfare state and hardly any freedom at all.
Look around you.
What you see is not the result of libertarianism but of conservativism compromising a few hundred times to often to “achieve other ends”.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:<<< libertarianism is the handmaiden of the overarching nanny-state that conservatives want to hold at bay. Libertarians don’t get this, and it is an unintened consequence of their ideology, but it is no less true. >>>[/quote]This is so clearly and obviously true that it astonishes me that seemingly otherwise intelligent individuals do not see it chomping on their nose. [quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:<<< Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled. >>>[/quote]Very VERY good indeed though they won’t get it right away will deny it once it’s explained.
[/quote]
I dont deny it for a second, I reject the notion that a state can do more than that without growing like a cancer.
To think that you can further conservative goals by sacrificing liberty and not run into a nanny state once it has been sacrificed and then have the gall to call libertarians naive is highly entertaining.
[quote]kamui wrote:
ok. fair enough.
but after that, these useful ideas can easily be shared with hundred of people.
Their scarcity drop exponentially, so their values and their prices should drop expontentially too.
but it doesn’t seem to be the case.
why ?
[/quote]
Of course that is the case, but ideas do not necessarily come in a bundle.
Just because you know that something can be done does not mean that you know how to do it.
That requires a whole new set of ideas.
So, knowing that aspiring exists is all well and good, but knowing how to produce it cheaply is a different set of ideas.
If you want aspirin you better pay someone to study these ideas though.
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled. [/quote]
For this sentence I am willing to overlook the rest of your post.
I am fascinated though that you think that liberty can and should be sacrificed to achieve other goals of the state and then decry libertarians as the intellectual torch holders of liberals.
Somewhere in there is the actual assumption that once on you compromise on libertzy to achieve other ends it will stop with the conservative agenda.
What it in effect does however is that conservatives start to logroll with liberals so that they can achieve their agenda which leaves us with a welfare-warfare state and hardly any freedom at all.
Look around you.
What you see is not the result of libertarianism but of conservativism compromising a few hundred times to often to “achieve other ends”.
[/quote]
This is largely an unfocused non-response that misses my point, but in any event, liberty has to be sacrificed to achieve certain ends because liberty does not always lead to good results.
That was the point of the means-ends distinction - libertarians don’t care where liberty leads, there is no such thing as a bad result, so long as a person was free to achieve it.
What we see in the nanny-state, of course, is libertarianism’s social and cultural liberalism;s natural result - when you preach a Gospel of “do whatever you want whenever you want, and I don’t want any institutions (government or otherwise) to impede ‘muh exercise of muh liberty’”, just start generating bad results…really bad results. And when you do, when you tear down the institutions that provide the discipline and order that tries to channel liberty into good results, there is a void.
That void is filled by the so-called nanny-state, and always will be.
[quote]orion wrote:
To think that you can further conservative goals by sacrificing liberty and not run into a nanny state once it has been sacrificed and then have the gall to call libertarians naive is highly entertaining. [/quote]
Of course conservatives can further conservative goals by sacrificing liberty, as is sometimes necessary when liberty leads to a bad result - what you don’t get, and is the result of predictable libertarian myopia, is that these “sacrifices” don’t strictly come from inviting state coercion to further a conservative goals. Far from it - conservatives may feel the need to restrict liberty for some End, but most often the preferred vehicle for doing so is some other institution other than the state.
Libertarians never get this - maybe they never will.
State coerced and enforced conservatism (morally speaking) is an oxymoron. A large united majority of private and voluntary conservatives is the first requirement for workable limited government to last more than about a half hour.
[quote]Tiribulus wrote:
State coerced and enforced conservatism (morally speaking) is an oxymoron. A large united majority of private and voluntary conservatives is the first requirement for workable limited government to last more than about a half hour.[/quote]
You have it exactly wrong.
Moral rules are a function of necessity.
No child support? No unwanted pregnancies, at least significantly fewer.
No unemployment insurance? Suddenly keeping a job and all that it entails means something.
No medicaire or medicaid? Oh my, eating healthy and working out became just that much more attractive.
Those rules are not pie in the sky heavenly ordained maxims that are impossible to live up to, they are practicak guidelines to lead a succesful life if novody bails your ass out if you fuck up.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Conservatives think liberty is a means, libertarians think liberty is an end. These can never be reconciled. [/quote]
For this sentence I am willing to overlook the rest of your post.
I am fascinated though that you think that liberty can and should be sacrificed to achieve other goals of the state and then decry libertarians as the intellectual torch holders of liberals.
Somewhere in there is the actual assumption that once on you compromise on libertzy to achieve other ends it will stop with the conservative agenda.
What it in effect does however is that conservatives start to logroll with liberals so that they can achieve their agenda which leaves us with a welfare-warfare state and hardly any freedom at all.
Look around you.
What you see is not the result of libertarianism but of conservativism compromising a few hundred times to often to “achieve other ends”.
[/quote]
This is largely an unfocused non-response that misses my point, but in any event, liberty has to be sacrificed to achieve certain ends because liberty does not always lead to good results.
That was the point of the means-ends distinction - libertarians don’t care where liberty leads, there is no such thing as a bad result, so long as a person was free to achieve it.
What we see in the nanny-state, of course, is libertarianism’s social and cultural liberalism;s natural result - when you preach a Gospel of “do whatever you want whenever you want, and I don’t want any institutions (government or otherwise) to impede ‘muh exercise of muh liberty’”, just start generating bad results…really bad results. And when you do, when you tear down the institutions that provide the discipline and order that tries to channel liberty into good results, there is a void.
That void is filled by the so-called nanny-state, and always will be.[/quote]
Pish posh, the nanny state was not a result of libertarianism, I will give you though that a welfare state combined with an anything goes mentality leads to consequences.
However, the libertarian ideal is not anything goes, it is anything goes and you better deal with the fucking consequences of your actions yourself.
If there was no nanny state, brought to us in large oart by conservatives in their never ending quest to legislate morality, people would have their come to Jesus moment faster than you can say halleluja.
[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
[quote]orion wrote:
To think that you can further conservative goals by sacrificing liberty and not run into a nanny state once it has been sacrificed and then have the gall to call libertarians naive is highly entertaining. [/quote]
Of course conservatives can further conservative goals by sacrificing liberty, as is sometimes necessary when liberty leads to a bad result - what you don’t get, and is the result of predictable libertarian myopia, is that these “sacrifices” don’t strictly come from inviting state coercion to further a conservative goals. Far from it - conservatives may feel the need to restrict liberty for some End, but most often the preferred vehicle for doing so is some other institution other than the state.
Libertarians never get this - maybe they never will. [/quote]
No, we just dont care.
If you do not want to associate with people who do not live up to your own standards or do not want to endorse in any way behavior that you deem to be harmful, knock yourself out.
If you want to legislate though, you are interfering with our prime directive.