On 8/10/2013 4:33 AM, Shay wrote:
>
>
> "Patrick Elliott" <kag### [at] gmailcom> wrote in message
> news:5205a3f5$1@news.povray.org...
>>
>> And, I think you are being naive, like most people that suscribe to
>> their "vision", that you can kill the beast, instead of just breeding
>> a new one. At the core, you will always get the same result, if you
>> don't have someone making sure that megacorps don't form, or that the
>> smaller ones band together, to control the government too, etc. The
>> beast can get smaller, or bigger, but you don't kill it by someone
>> deregulating everything, shutting down the government, getting rid of
>> a military, and replacing it with 500 groups of thugs, instead of one,
>> etc.
>
> And I thing you are being naïve, like most people who subscribe to the
> centralized-power "vision" that you can control a larger share of the
> government than you do the economy. And worse, you *!*want*!*
> price-fixing, selective taxation, and a massive military. Doesn't work.
> Hasn't worked. Won't work.
Oh, I do huh? So glad you know what is going on in my mind. No, I don't 
want a massive military. That is just wasteful and stupid. I want 
government that works, unfortunately, time after time, we see that 
"works" generally means that there are lots of small fish, fighting over 
things, such that they are forced to compromise with the people that 
elected them to get a nibble at things they want themselves. What we 
have now, instead, is a two party mess, where the only thing that 
changes is which species of fish is in charge, and maybe, once in a 
while, the ecosystem shifts enough that the smaller ones among that 
species rise up, and replace the bigger ones, hence the right wing, 
ultra-religious, government so small it will fit in your back pocket, or 
a woman's uterus, "republicans", we are seeing right now.

There is such a thing as both too big, and too small. But, that isn't 
the only problem. Libertarians can, and do, play the game the same way, 
and are already turning into another big fish. That is what won't work.

As for price fixing and selective taxation.. This one really gets me... 
How many technologies, short of a damn war, have grown, only because 
someone, other than the public sector, decided they where worth 
pursuing, and "funded" research? How would any of them have ended up 
being created, without some sort of incentive, from "non-public" 
sources, who, I don't give a frak what kind of economist you are, your 
company, mega-corp or otherwise, will want to, unless they can 
monopolize the new technology in some way, maintain the status quo 
instead. Don't you dare tell me libertarians don't think that way, I see 
it all the time from them. If it can't benefit them, more than someone 
else, then its a "bad investment". Not, in fact, actually true, and if 
they really did give a damn about helping other people, they would have 
been building, for example, light rail, in recognition of the necessity, 
and improvement to everyone's well being, including their workers, and 
thus, their odds of having workers, 30 years ago. Oddly, the only people 
bothering has been "government", and they have been so two faced about 
it, that all that has ever been done is to waste tens of millions of 
dollar, "studying" the problem, like.. at least once every 5 years, like 
clockwork, and increasing costs, every single time.

And taxation.. I have heard all about the whole "tax everyone the same". 
It has *exactly* one thing, and only one thing, going for it - if you 
could manage to keep people from having loopholes (Whoops, there goes 
incentives for charity, running needed, but poor profitability 
businesses at a loss, or dozens of other legit reasons to allow 
loopholes, along with the 50 times as many illegitimate ones), you might 
get "some" of them to actually pay taxes. Of course, all the extra money 
they make would, instead of flowing back into our economy, would instead 
flow into a offshore Caiman Island account, just like it does now, 
because, surprisingly, they a) don't have enough to spend their money 
on, that offsets the slow, inevitable, bankruptcy of the entire rest of 
the economy, as money disappears, never to be seen again, and b) there 
is no way, under such a so called "fair" tax system to recover any of it.

I really do not comprehend why this basic math is so hard. Its like a 
hydraulic leak, or an air leak, or heck, a bloody memory leak. 
Eventually, it **must** crash the system. Do we, every few thousand 
years, have another French revolution, to fix this, or actually admit 
that its total bullshit that being rich, making a lot of money, and then 
railing about people taking it, is "acceptable", because someone you 
"earned it" by being better than all the people for which the 
combination of, yes, government spending, but also, your own damned 
unnecessary greed, inflates costs by 600% in fewer decades than I need 
the fingers on one hand to count them?

I will be honest, I am a "social" libertarian. A lot of liberals would 
likely admit the same. Its the whole, "My neighbor believing differently 
than I do, neither picks my pocket, nor breaks my bones." The problem 
is, that is only half right. Belief can be challenged by fact, 
knowledge, especially of ourselves, undermines differences. Ideals, and 
beliefs, can become tolerable, when "understood", or must be through 
out, when they prove to be intolerant of change, reality, or the well 
being of a people. Economics.. doesn't work like this. When that has to 
change, real people get hurt, in real ways, and sometimes killed, 
because, some bastard out there, right now, is figuring out that they 
can pick my wallet, even while finding a way to convince someone else, 
to pay a fourth party, to break my legs, all so they can shove what ever 
they got out of my wallet, into their shoe box.

There is no ideology in that, other than, "I deserve", no argument you 
can make in its disfavor, which doesn't demand that the perpetrator 
admit they don't deserve it, no solution that can be proposed, which 
will not inconvenient the one planning it, and yet no way that it can be 
allowed to continue, without all of the problems such thinking causes, 
getting worse. Introduce the concept of "I own", to any object you 
cannot physically carry on your person, and pretty soon some idiot is 
applying it to intangible ideas, patches of land, which they don't want 
other people on, food and other basic needs, and finally, to *people*, 
who after all, are just one more commodity, which, if they are not 
"earning" enough, must simply not be "trying hard enough".

Economic libertarianism in inhumane, it ignores "why" we don't have 
freer markets (or, rather, it ignores the sound reasons some laws where 
passed, and simply asserts that only the corrupt ones count), and then, 
kind of like someone who says, "There have never ever been true 
communists", they proclaim, as you just did, "No one has tried a true 
libertarian economy!" From where I am standing, and given the things 
that the moment have flat out, boldly stated, about some things.. I have 
no problem understanding why, and being terrified at the prospect 
someone might actually attempt it. Because, all I can see, given its 
leaders, is Dystopia.

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