Or Voltairian. Why can't we use that word anymore?

I fancy a good satirical polemic, especially in regards to flippant condensers of classic literature, who hide behind simplistic animations aflutter of Lovercraftian connotations. Such balderdash! Give me a Byronic hero any day, over the snide Youtubian objectivist...

@VoodooV: "Every one of these youtube crusaders are comfortably enjoying the perks of a system they despise."

What perks? Like roads and firemen? You know, it's not like we couldn't have those things without government. And those kinds of services are only a small portion of the federal budget. In fact, from all the excise taxes collected on gasoline, tobacco and alcohol, they'd cover the roads completely, which costs around $60 billion annually. In fact, things like the EPA, Dept. of Trans, NASA, Dept. of Edu, all cost less than the revenue the federal government categorizes as "other." Look it up: http://www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budget/historicals

So what about all the wars and militarism? Is that, too, a perk? And the prison industrial complex that locks up 1% of our population? What are these perks you speak of?

Even Ayn Rand took gov't assistance.

I love it when statists bring this up. I personally am not an Objectivist, and find lots of flaws with their ideology, but this is a cheap blow. Obviously it shows the economic illiteracy of most statists. For one, she's forced to pay into social security, so therefore why shouldn't she receive some of it back? And second, if you spend more than a couple seconds reading about U.S. monetary policy, you'd know that the purchasing power of the dollar is reduced over time due to inflation, and hence savings are always impacted. This should alarm you instead of excite you.

The whole thing is infested with logical fallacies: false equivalencies, ad homs, strawmen, and even a no true scotsman thrown in for shits and giggles.

By all means don't take any time to point out which things he said were these things. No, that'd be helpful, and we wouldn't want to cloudy any appeals to emotion with pesky things like fact and well thought out rebuttals.

they spend all this time criticizing the problems of gov't and NEVER ONCE demonstrate how it would work without these systems.

I think there are plenty who do. It's just that statists don't accept those answers, or any answers that don't emulate the current status quo systems they're accustomed to. I'm not interested in replacing public schools with another bureaucracy.

> "why can't 'free marketers' buy a whole country and try it out fo realizes?"

Trying dude, trying. Not so easy to buy a country these days.

> "The country and state are owned by us all, we are represented by our government (no matter how poorly)."

The government does not "represent" me in any meaningful way. This is an absurdity, plain and simple.

> "Did school not teach you how that's set up? It should have."

Another thing you learned in private school?

> "Thank you, the implication that I'm unworthy of discussion with, then continued discussion was at best, odd."

Yes it is.

> "I'm saying we can make it better if we elect better reps"

No you can't. But like I said, go ahead and prove it. I'm not stopping you.

> "I agree that there's too much 'governing' with far too little result, but I disagree that the answer is to stop governing."

Again, go for whatever 'solution' you think is best. I'm not stopping you. I'm also not participating in it, obviously, as long as it seems like a ridiculous idea.

> "I say the present government sucks, and sucks worse in some places than others."

See? Even we can agree on one thing.

> "I agree that there's too much 'governing' with far too little result"

Two things.

Look, if you're pro taxes, pro police/military, but not a "statist" and consider yourself a (former) libertarian, then perhaps you're an Objectivist or a Randian. Randians would think that Oakland has a "shitty" government but that a right-wing one would be good and necessary. Rand did not call herself a libertarian and rather hated 'anarchists'.

translation: I know you are but what am I.

Libertarianism in the best case is a redundancy. I still remember the first time someone introduced me to the concept of what a Libertarian was. My reaction was "duh, how could anyone possibly be against that?"

Reality however is quite different. Every time we've had an instance of a politician defending the "right" of a corporation to do things everyone knows is harmful to other people, guess what! they're a libertarian!!

Everytime we have an instance of someone complaining about some form of government excess or incompetency and that someone argues we should scrap the whole system, yet has no answer to the question of what would you put in it's place that would be better. Guess what..Libertarian again!

Everyone who seems to think rational self-interest will protect the strong from bullying the weak, again, probably a Libertarian.

Guess what? that conveys the sense that Libertarians = Anarchists or Objectivists/Ayn Rand worshipers.

We only hear about Libertarians when they're bitching about gov't. If the guy in the video is correct and they do agree that Gov't has a role? please elaborate? where IS gov't allowed to step in and intervene and be proactive? If your answer is the Military. BZZZT try again. Every fucking party on this planet agrees that we need a military, the only disagreement is in how much.

So it just does nothing to advance the idea that Libertarians do anything but bitch about the gov't Well get in line...everyone has some grievance with the gov't. Every single party on this planet wants gov't intervention in some things, no intervention in other things. They just disagree in what parts.

So it just makes Libertarians seem redundant. Every single person throughout the political spectrum wants gov't to be no bigger than it needs to be. If you think otherwise, then you need to put on your tinfoil hat.

Even if there was a better way of distinguishing Libertarians apart from the other parties. Guess what. every "ism" on the planet has the problem where not everyone agrees on how things should be done. Ask a 100 libertarians how they think gov't should operate and you'll get 100 different answers, just like if you ask 100 Christians about God, you'll get 100 different answers. Same thing goes with every party.

I'm sure there are some very well intentioned Libertarians out there. Name me someone who doesn't have good intentions? But it's been demonstrated as I mentioned earlier how Libertarianism gets used as an excuse to get away with doing shitty things to people who don't know any better. So tell me how I can tell the difference between the good Libertarians and the "bad" ones

Till then, Libertarianism is a meaningless term.

Epistemological issues seem so central to everything. Within the libertarian devotion to reason that Chomsky has praised, two camps seem to be at odds with one another, in a kind of in-house brawl.
One camp holds the empiricist skeptics who also happen to favor scientific materialism (like Penn Jillette and James Randi and some others you may not have heard about, or maybe you have) and the other camp holds the natural law axiomatic-deductive philosophers who don't outright dismiss homeopathic medicine, for example, and who question flouride in the water.
We can broadly see at least seven different positions. One writer I enjoyed a bit in college, Robert Anton Wilson, seems to have accepted empiricism in conjunction with intuitive-mysticism as valid sources of knowledge but not axiomatic-deductive reasoning. He wrote a short piece on his opposition to natural law in "Natural Law and Don't Put a Rubber on Your Willy." I don't think he developed his opposition thoroughly. He devoted more to his writing to oppose scientism (like double-bind dogmatic empiricism) with a whole book, "The New Inquisition."
Another position is that of Ayn Rand and her Objectivist followers who accepted neither intuitive-mystical knowledge nor much empiricism, but only (or mostly) axiomatic-deductive reasoning.
In my opinion, a stronger view accepts all three and tests theories against all three.

The Romney/Ryan team have a long list of disqualifying characteristics

1. Poor understanding of economics.
2. Poor understanding of foreign policy.
3. Near constant bald-faced lying.
4. They seem to be rooting for the country to fail.
5. Playing political games during a time when we face a lot of problems.
6. Silver spoons firmly wedged in anuses.
7. Both have a history of extreme hostility towards the working class.
8. Both are cultists (Mormon/Objectivist)
9. Plutocratic policy based more on dogma than pragmatism
10. Neither seem smart enough for the gig.

Ayn Rand's Influence on Alan Greenspan
In The Age of Turbulence, Alan Greenspan describes the influence that Ayn Rand had on his intellectual development.

Ayn Rand became a stabilizing force in my life. It hadn't taken long for us to have a meeting of the minds -- mostly my mind meeting hers -- and in the fifties and early sixties I became a regular at the weekly gatherings at her apartment. She was a wholly original thinker, sharply analytical, strong-willed, highly principled, and very insistent on rationality as the highest value. In that regard, our values were congruent -- we agreed on the importance of mathematics and intellectual rigor.

But she had gone far beyond that, thinking more broadly than I had ever dared. She was a devoted Aristotelian -- the central idea being that there exists an objective reality that is separate from consciousness and capable of being known. Thus she called her philosophy objectivism. And she applied key tenets of Aristotelian ethics -- namely, that individuals have innate nobility and that the highest duty of every individual is to flourish by realizing that potential. Exploring ideas with her was a remarkable course in logic and epistemology. I was able to keep up with her most of the time.

Rand's Collective became my first social circle outside the university and the economics profession. I engaged in the all-night debates and wrote spirited commentary for her newsletter with the fervor of a young acolyte drawn to a whole new set of ideas. Like any new convert, I tended to frame the concepts in their starkest, simplest terms. Most everyone sees the simple outline of an idea before complexity and qualification set in. If we didn't, there would be nothing to qualify, nothing to learn. It was only as contradictions inherent in my new notions began to emerge that the fervor receded.

One contradiction I found particularly enlightening. According to objectivist precepts, taxation was immoral because it allowed for government appropriation of private property by force. Yet if taxation was wrong, how could you reliably finance the essential functions of government, including the protection of individuals' rights through police power? The Randian answer, that those who rationally saw the need for government would contribute voluntarily, was inadequate. People have free will; suppose they refused?

I still found the broader philosophy of unfettered market competition compelling, as I do to this day, but I reluctantly began to realize that if there were qualifications to my intellectual edifice, I couldn't argue that others should readily accept it. [...]

Ayn Rand and I remained close until she died in 1982, and I'm grateful for the influence she had on my life. I was intellectually limited until I met her. All of my work had been empirical and numbers-based, never values-oriented. I was a talented technician, but that was all. My logical positivism had discounted history and literature -- if you'd asked me whether Chaucer was worth reading, I'd have said, "Don't bother." Rand persuaded me to look at human beings, their values, how they work, what they do and why they do it, and how they think and why they think. This broadened my horizons far beyond the models of economics I'd learned. I began to study how societies form and how cultures behave, and to realize that economics and forecasting depend on such knowledge -- different cultures grow and create material wealth in profoundly different ways. All of this started for me with Ayn Rand. She introduced me to a vast realm from which I'd shut myself off.

From The Age of Turbulence, pp. 51-53. Omissions from the text are shown with bracketed ellipses. All other punctuation and spelling is from the original.

http://www.noblesoul.com/orc/bio/turbulence.html

Ah yes---own property, as opposed to it owning you. I don't believe one can own property, but I believe it can be claimed by someone.

And as goes the example of positive liberty, of course they can impose it with violence. They can also craft multiple ways around the whole argument by policies that hold down black individuals in other ways (Which they have done so a thousand different ways.) So instead of being out in the open, they are now cloak-and-dagger, which still is better than the old days I suppose.

A good example of negative liberty is found in the movie industry. American History X probably slashed into racism these days more (Since our young have the attention span of gnats and wouldn't listen to a long speech) than anything else (Warning, that was a very unverifiable statement.) Positive liberty would disdain such a video, one that is full of violence and racism and it's universal motivation is greed--to acquire property from the movie's sale. Of course, since it has a good "message" it would not be prohibited, of course...

But no, I read it right then.


>> ^NetRunner:

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
As far as positive liberty, it seems just a state of mind more so than the actual concept of liberty.
...
Negative liberty is the vastly closer-to-freedom expression. That's not to say positive "liberty" is a bad thing--but like I said, it is more state-of-mind than actual freedom (I guess you could argue that freedom of thought is the only freedom that matters. Or that freedom to agree as a society is still freedom...)
Of course, I could be reading the whole thing wrong...in which case, ah, it happens--we are human after all.
I think you're reading it wrong.
Let's set property aside for a minute. My favorite positive vs. negative liberty example comes from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Specifically Title VII, which both Rand and Ron Paul said they oppose as being a limit on (negative) liberty.
Title VII basically bans discrimination in privately owned public spaces, like stores, restaurants, theatres, etc. It gives all people the positive liberty of being able to participate in the economy, no matter their race, gender, or creed. They can shop in any shop, apply for any job, and purchase services freely. They've been empowered to fulfill their own potential.
From the negative liberty (and absolutist property) point of view, this is a decrease in liberty -- it involves the state placing a constraint on people's ability to do as they wish with their property. They can no longer put a "Whites Only" sign in the window, and they cannot enforce that policy with violence anymore because an external constraint has been placed on them that limits their "freedom" to do so.
Thing is, "property" is also an external constraint inconsistent with negative liberty. If I want to drive a car, but have no money to buy, rent, or lease one, it's illegal for me to do so, even if there's thousands of idle ones available for me to use in the parking lot. That's an external constraint being imposed on me too.
The only real way to consider property compatible with liberty is by fiat (as libertarians/objectivists do), or to think of it as a sort of positive liberty. You are empowered to acquire objects, and become their master. You are empowered to bequeath that right to whomever you choose. You are entitled to fair compensation if someone damages or steals your property. You are entitled to fair compensation for your labor. And so on.
That's why I get so frustrated with people who have the gall to tell me that I don't understand liberty. Usually they're saying that because they haven't ever been exposed to the other side of the philosophical debate.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:

As far as positive liberty, it seems just a state of mind more so than the actual concept of liberty.
...
Negative liberty is the vastly closer-to-freedom expression. That's not to say positive "liberty" is a bad thing--but like I said, it is more state-of-mind than actual freedom (I guess you could argue that freedom of thought is the only freedom that matters. Or that freedom to agree as a society is still freedom...)
Of course, I could be reading the whole thing wrong...in which case, ah, it happens--we are human after all.

I think you're reading it wrong.

Let's set property aside for a minute. My favorite positive vs. negative liberty example comes from the 1964 Civil Rights Act. Specifically Title VII, which both Rand and Ron Paul said they oppose as being a limit on (negative) liberty.

Title VII basically bans discrimination in privately owned public spaces, like stores, restaurants, theatres, etc. It gives all people the positive liberty of being able to participate in the economy, no matter their race, gender, or creed. They can shop in any shop, apply for any job, and purchase services freely. They've been empowered to fulfill their own potential.

From the negative liberty (and absolutist property) point of view, this is a decrease in liberty -- it involves the state placing a constraint on people's ability to do as they wish with their property. They can no longer put a "Whites Only" sign in the window, and they cannot enforce that policy with violence anymore because an external constraint has been placed on them that limits their "freedom" to do so.

Thing is, "property" is also an external constraint inconsistent with negative liberty. If I want to drive a car, but have no money to buy, rent, or lease one, it's illegal for me to do so, even if there's thousands of idle ones available for me to use in the parking lot. That's an external constraint being imposed on me too.

The only real way to consider property compatible with liberty is by fiat (as libertarians/objectivists do), or to think of it as a sort of positive liberty. You are empowered to acquire objects, and become their master. You are empowered to bequeath that right to whomever you choose. You are entitled to fair compensation if someone damages or steals your property. You are entitled to fair compensation for your labor. And so on.

That's why I get so frustrated with people who have the gall to tell me that I don't understand liberty. Usually they're saying that because they haven't ever been exposed to the other side of the philosophical debate.

>> ^marbles:

I don't think speeding is necessarily a victimless crime. But prostitution is. Gambling is. What’s your point?


My point is victimhood isn't part of what constitutes a crime. My larger point is you're constantly using "is" when what you mean to say is "should be". A crime is a violation of law. You may believe that there shouldn't be laws against activities that don't have a particularized victim, but that doesn't mean prostitution isn't a crime, it means you think it shouldn't be a crime.

It's the difference between telling someone "I am the richest man in the world," and "I should be the richest man in the world."

>> ^marbles:
We are biologically programed to seek life. A newborn naturally suckles a nipple and instinctively holds his breath under water. These are not learned behaviors. We are entitled to life. Property is an extension of life. It’s the representation of the inherent right to control the fruits of one's own labor. Surely a prehistoric man believed he was entitled to control an uninhabited cave he found, an animal he killed or captured, or anything he built or created.

So anything you feel entitled to, you're entitled to?

Moreover, primitive man had lots of impulses -- rape women that were caught their fancy, steal from people too weak to stop them, kill people they didn't like, etc. Then you get to the more grand delusional impulses, like "I speak for the Sun god, so do as I say or he'll burn you for eternity after you die".

The feeling of entitlement to enclose and deny the use of portions of nature to others likely only came about after agriculture, and even then largely in the form tribal land ownership, not individual ownership.

>> ^marbles:
Ok, I’ll bite. If you deny 100% self-ownership (i.e. the philosophy of liberty as described in this video), then that leaves only 2 other options. Option 1: Universal and equal ownership of everyone else (i.e. Communism) Option 2: Partial Ownership of One Group by Another (e.g. Feudalism) Option 1 is unachievable and unsustainable. Option 2 is a system of rule by one class over another.

It seems to me that there's a lot more than 2 options. Over here in my way of seeing the world, property is just a social convention. I am my body, I don't merely own it.

Ownership is meaningless when there's no one else around. Ownership is meaningless if there's no societal impetus to adhere to the convention of property.

So on the score of "self-ownership", I mostly think your relationship to your body is qualitatively different from the relationship to inanimate objects you might acquire through labor or other economic interactions. Taking my property is stealing, taking my body is kidnapping. Damaging property isn't the same as violent assault on a person. Trespassing is not equivalent to rape.

>> ^NetRunner:
The only thing we're trying to do is get you to broaden your perspective a little. We're being polite about the fact that you seem to think us evil (or perhaps just stupid) for believing what we believe, and we're trying to help you understand a little bit of why we think the way we do, and see that maybe we're not monsters after all...>> ^marbles:
LOL@“We're being polite”
Why are you talking in “we” and not “I”? And if it makes you feel better by putting words in my mouth or thoughts in my head, then fine. But that's not why I dismissed your claim that this is only the “objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty”.
I think the crux of the problem is you like to label everything instead of just accepting it for what it is. Political issues and figures are full of delusions and deceptions. You do yourself a disservice by putting everything into one ideological box or another. I know plenty of “libertarians” that don’t have a problem with the patriot act and plenty of “progressives” that don’t have a problem with the cold-blooded murder of OBL. The political false dichotomy left/right survives because of people like you and, ironically, the guy warning about black and white thinking.


I used the pronoun "we" because I think that paragraph was descriptive of several of the people who engaged with you here, not just me.

I think you misunderstand my meaning when I labeled it as being "the objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty", I'm mostly just pointing out that the definition you're presenting is just one view of the concept, and not the defining conception of liberty. I'm not pigeonholing it and dismissing it, I'm just saying that the proper phrasing here is "This is what liberty is to me", not "This is what liberty is, and anyone who thinks otherwise is wrong".

My view of liberty is no less valid than yours, and if you assert that it is invalid without demonstrating even a rough working knowledge of what I (or even liberals generally) actually believe, then it's you who's pigeonholing and dismissing things, not me.

As far as "the guy warning about black and white thinking", I'm mostly just in favor of thinking. It seems to me that if you go around believing that there are some simple, arbitrary rules that govern all of human morality, and refuse to entertain any skeptical critique of the nature or validity of those rules, then that's not thinking.

>> ^NetRunner:
Violating the speed limit is a crime. There's no victim.I don't think speeding is necessarily a victimless crime. But prostitution is. Gambling is. What’s your point?
>> ^NetRunner:
I'm a human, and I have a mind. I have no earthly idea what you think natural rights are, or why I should care about them.

I have my own reasons for what I believe, and how I approach the concept of rights, and it's clearly different from yours. How can that be possible, if "natural rights" are wired into us?We are biologically programed to seek life. A newborn naturally suckles a nipple and instinctively holds his breath under water. These are not learned behaviors. We are entitled to life. Property is an extension of life. It’s the representation of the inherent right to control the fruits of one's own labor. Surely a prehistoric man believed he was entitled to control an uninhabited cave he found, an animal he killed or captured, or anything he built or created.
>> ^NetRunner:

This is really the crux of the dispute in all your myriad conversations on this video. You seem to think anyone who asks you to think about what you're saying is just trying to trick you somehow.Ok, I’ll bite. If you deny 100% self-ownership (i.e. the philosophy of liberty as described in this video), then that leaves only 2 other options. Option 1: Universal and equal ownership of everyone else (i.e. Communism) Option 2: Partial Ownership of One Group by Another (e.g. Feudalism) Option 1 is unachievable and unsustainable. Option 2 is a system of rule by one class over another.
>> ^NetRunner:
The only thing we're trying to do is get you to broaden your perspective a little. We're being polite about the fact that you seem to think us evil (or perhaps just stupid) for believing what we believe, and we're trying to help you understand a little bit of why we think the way we do, and see that maybe we're not monsters after all...LOL@“We're being polite”

Why are you talking in “we” and not “I”? And if it makes you feel better by putting words in my mouth or thoughts in my head, then fine. But that's not why I dismissed your claim that this is only the “objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty”.
I think the crux of the problem is you like to label everything instead of just accepting it for what it is. Political issues and figures are full of delusions and deceptions. You do yourself a disservice by putting everything into one ideological box or another. I know plenty of “libertarians” that don’t have a problem with the patriot act and plenty of “progressives” that don’t have a problem with the cold-blooded murder of OBL. The political false dichotomy left/right survives because of people like you and, ironically, the guy warning about black and white thinking.

>> ^NetRunner:

@marbles, I'm fully aware of the objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty. You seem to not have any idea that this is not "the" definition of liberty. This is perhaps the definition of liberty that appeals most to you, but it isn't the sole (or even common) conception of liberty.
Google positive liberty, for example.
Also, in that other conversation, you called me "hyperbolic" for hypothesizing that you believed liberty was absolute authority over property -- that is in a very literal sense what this video is describing.
politics


No, this is "the" definition of liberty. I'm not sure how Ayn Rand fits into the conversation and "libertarian" wasn't even a word until mid to late 19th Century.

Individual liberty was a liberal idea born out of the Age of Enlightenment, along with other liberal ideas like free markets, consent of the governed, and limited government.
Liberal and liberty come from Latin word liber, which means "free."
Modern conceptions of liberalism take on a statist agenda, and so do modern conceptions of the idea of liberty.

I planned on eventually replying in the other conversation. Maybe I'll muster up a reply tomorrow. You said "property owners get absolute unchecked authority over how people may interact with their property". "unchecked" implies that freedom grants people the right to ignore other people's rights. And if someone else has authority over your property, then by definition it's not your property. It's impossible have liberty without the protection of property.

@marbles, I'm fully aware of the objectivist/libertarian definition of liberty. You seem to not have any idea that this is not "the" definition of liberty. This is perhaps the definition of liberty that appeals most to you, but it isn't the sole (or even common) conception of liberty.

Google positive liberty, for example.

Also, in that other conversation, you called me "hyperbolic" for hypothesizing that you believed liberty was absolute authority over property -- that is in a very literal sense what this video is describing.

*politics

You just don't understand the nature of good and evil according to scripture. Man, when he sinned, decided to go with his own interpertation of what good and evil is instead of trusting God. That is the subjective part. This led to his fallen nature. Because of this, Man is naturally inclined to do evil. God however knows absolutely what is good and what is evil. His law is there to provide the standard of conduct that man in his fallen state is naturally disinclined to do. This was the reason that Jesus came to earth to die for our sins, because every man has sinned and fallen short and earned punishment for himself.

Thank you for admitting there is not nor could there be an objective standard of behavior under atheism. So in your world, if the Nazis won, the holocaust is moral. Right?

I didn't dodge anything. What I explained was that there was no institution of slavery in the bible. I also explained that people in those times were frequently slaves voluntarily. I don't see rules governing the treatment of slaves as condoning slavery in that light.

>> ^KnivesOut:
Nice dodge. You avoided pretty much my entire point.
If man can't be trusted to obey or conform some the objectivist ideal of morality, then what purpose does it server? Every judgement of man is subjective, by definition.
There is not objective evil. The evil of the nazi holocaust was subjectively evil. By definition, because the people perpetrating the crime thought they were doing what was right.
Nice attempt at parsing the objective truth of the bible into subjective conclusions. Are you saying that the bible's stance on slavery was OK, because there were/are some good kinds of slavery? That's what it sounded like. This is the inherent flaw in your bible, in that it has to be interpreted by imperfect and flawed beings.

Nice dodge. You avoided pretty much my entire point.

If man can't be trusted to obey or conform to the objectivist ideal of morality, then what purpose does it serve? Every judgement of man is subjective, by definition.

There is no objective evil. The evil of the nazi holocaust was subjectively evil. By definition, because the people perpetrating the crime thought they were doing what was right.

Nice attempt at parsing the objective truth of the bible into subjective conclusions. Are you saying that the bible's stance on slavery was OK, because there were/are some good kinds of slavery? That's what it sounded like. This is the inherent flaw in your bible, in that it has to be interpreted by imperfect and flawed beings.