@ChaosEngine, I'm a big Moore fan, too. He's pretty great, isn't he? Curious what you thought of the Watchmen movie. And if you watched the Ultimate Cut or not. Now on to the more unpleasant stuff...


You wrote: "The problems I'd like to see addressed are what happens when this idyllic utopia breaks down. What happens in the absence of a leviathan when someone robs or steals from you using force? How is that righted? What happens when a crime is perpetrated and there is no single victim, but the act is still damaging? Pollution, for instance."

First off, I'm not sure small "l" libertarianism creates a utopia, idyllic or otherwise, It makes very little promises in that area, because the pragmatic argument is: freedom is dangerous. And libertarianism doesn't seek to create a perfect socially engineered society. It knows human problems are messy and complex, and there's no way to solve them from a monolithic, and often clumsy, top-down approach.

As for redressable damages (wrongs being righted), well, most small "l" libertarians still believe in civil courts and even administrative roles for government, believe it or not. Even Moore thought the government would work best in an administrative role, and he was a bonafide anarchist. This video is about the more extreme anarchist perspective of voluntaryism, which is a political philosophy of non-aggression, and couldn't be leapt into overnight. So, if someone pollutes your air, you have a grievance even in a libertarian society.


You wrote: "The biggest gang was chosen by it's people. And if they start acting like dicks, then we choose another gang. Now whether one gang is as bad as the previous one is another debate..."

Really? I could argue that the two party system holds our electorate system hostage, but let's just assume that's not true. Bush ran on a platform in 2001 that completely contradicted his policies while in office. So has Obama.


You wrote: "It actually describes a potential problem with anarchy, but it doesn't say how the problem would be solved..."

Right. Because anarchist aren't utopians. And small "l" libertarians don't want to replace a bad socially engineered political system with a new socially engineered political system. They really just want to leave it up to the people.

Magic = Social Engineering. Awesome.

Haha,

So destroying prospects for an Iran-Iraq-Syria-Pakistan-China pipeline via massive social engineering, extensive multi decade wars and risky political espionage is somehow cheaper than just good old price competition?

The Suez Canal is a much more direct threat to the trans-Israel pipeline (just look at a map to see what I mean) and clearly there is no massive, violent international conspiracy to suppress trade through that canal - Israel just undercuts their prices.

And for that matter, it's not like the trans Israel pipeline is some massive cash cow that is secretly protected at all costs. It's max capacity is only 400000 barrels per day - that's nothing as far as Israel is concerned profit-wise and definitely pathetic by Chinese daily demand-wise.

There is a grain of truth in every conspiracy: of course AIPEC is probably too influential, and of course the various wars going on right now have some economic incentives, but let's not be dumb about our accusations if we want to be taken seriously.

Murder is a difficult thing to get away with most of the time, and there's a level of sophisticated social engineering required before you can really rack up a count, otherwise you'll get caught around the 2 to 10 mark, like most people serving prison sentences that aren't drug or theft related.

But in all honesty, murder is not lucrative unless you're commander and chief to an army. The real money maker is hacking -- why doesn't EVERYONE hack? People on the internet are just slinging their credit card info and personal information around willy-nilly.

If you're a homeless person, here's what you do: (this is assuming you are so poor you have no money and little education beyond your street smart observation)

1. Steal someone's smartphone.
NOTE: If you are unsure what a "smartphone" is, just look for the people that are walking around, seemingly lost, looking at their phone the whole time. If you feel in control, ask them if they're lost. If they reply with a fragmented sentence about "GPS" or "Google maps", you have found your mark. If you're proficient with this style of conversation, find a way to lead them down an alleyway -- you know what to do after that. Example: They say they know that their destination is "somewhere around here, they just can't find the entrance", tell them that's because "the place is using a side entrance down this convenient alley."
2. Steal a second person's smartphone.
NOTE: Hopefully at least one of them isn't password locked. If both are, keep stealing until you have one that isn't.
3. Setup a free email account at Gmail and then go to Craigslist and sell the first device.
NOTE: Or Hotmail or Yahoo or Mailinator or whatever.
4. On the second device, find someone on Craigslist who will help you reset the first device so that no one can trace it back to you.
5. Use Google to learn how to hack, or better yet, just learn how to create phishing emails.
6. NOW HACK (or phish)!
7. You probably gave up on life a long time ago, so if you've figured out a foolproof way to steal smartphones, keep doing that, because people with smartphones are pretty dumb and hacking is actually kind of hard.

Special thanks to Google, Craigslist, smartphones, and the blind entitlement of your victims.

Enlightened Social Engineering High School and Trade Mill

The collateral damage from war on drugs is incalculable - we abuse the non-users and demonize non-violent people users. When will the world understand that doing drugs is not equal to being bad person? War on drugs is a social engineering failure. People who do drugs will always get them legally through prescription or illegally, no matter consequences.

As the great Noam Chomsky already stated, the war on drugs is a "war on certain drugs." This form of social engineering has never will never work...

Repealing Glass-Steagall got government out of the market, and was a huge mistake.

That's like blaming the water for a flood when the guy up the river dynamited the dam. Who repealed Glass-Steagall? AIG? The "banks"? Nope. It was government - who had a specific objective in doing so. That is government interference in the market.

The video gets that one thing right. After the Great Depression the imposition of Glass Steagall created an environment where the banking system couldn't go nuts. That is a great example of GOOD government. Government is fine when it sets up a set of basic, fair rules and then just stays out of everyone's business and lets the market run itself.

But leftists (both in the GOP and Democrat party) have been jonesing for more and more "social engineering" power for a long time. They look out on the world and see 'unfairness' (as they define it) and want to use the power of government to change the system into something they think is better. But as with all tyrants and meddlers in misery - they forget (or choose to ignore) the sad history that is the result of such thinking. Poverty, oppression, and death.

Government constantly interfering in the private sector has created an environment of uncertainty and patronage where businesses are more beholden to whoever holds political office than to their customers. If you want to stop the 'offenses' of Wall Street - then you have to slap down government first. Reduce thier size, scope, power, influence, and ability to interfere. When government loses power, it will flow back to people who have the ability to control the market with their buying dollars.

Well - the video gets one thing right. Repealing Glass-Steagall was a horrible mistake. Where they get it wrong is that it was not 'banks' or 'Wall Street' that was pushing for it.

Glass Stegall's repeal is a long story that begins with Jimmy Carter and ended with Bill Clinton. They leaned hard on banks because they wanted more poor folks owning houses. But the dang awful truth was that the poor folks just couldn't actually AFFORD to pay for those homes, and banks weren't in the business of giving them houses for nothing.

So Congress (with both the GOP and Democrats) began pushing for a change. It is very true that there were companies (notably AIG) who also pushed for this because they saw a way they could profit from it. But "banks" did not want this at all. They were forced into it. Once the housing bubble started they had to start in with the sub-primes just to compete but a lot of them knew it was very risky. But for a while it seemed to be working and everyone was making money hand over fist. And it has to be said also that CONSUMERS weren't exactly ethical either. Many people bought homes they knew they couldn't pay for just to make a quick buck.

That's the history and fact. Glass Steagall didn't go away because of evil banks. It went away because of governmetn social engineering. So bring it back already! Oh - yeah - that would interfere with Obama's CURRENT PRACTICE of forcing banks to give away more loans in minority communities...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article/577794/201107081851/DOJ-Begins-Bank-Witch-Hunt.aspx

The real problem is government. Get the government OUT of the market. Establish a simple set of basic, fair guidelines and then tell government to get out of everyone's way. Glass Steagall would have never been repealed without a corrupt government pushing for it.

It's only social engineering when somebody else does it

There are times when your parabolic orbit around reality comes dangerously close before you swing wide again. You are SOOO CLOSE to getting it, here. There is no free market. Not in our lifetime. Not in any lifetime. Like all utopic visions, it's a fantasy; a fantasy used to manipulate people like you into subservience. Liberty for the rich. Tyranny for rest.

When free market principles are put into place (like lowering taxes for the rich, privatization and deregulation) they yield no positive results. If you haven't been manipulated, then how do you explain your support for policies that fail time and time again? It's not a belief system, it's religion.

In the name of the Market, Ron Paul and the Invisible Hand, amen.

>> ^blankfist:

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:
The free market crowd said that lowering taxes, privatization and deregulation would create jobs and grow the economy. We've done all that and we are now suffering massive income inequality, massive unemployment and recession. How many times do we have to bang our head against the wall before we figure out that free market politics don't work, never have and never will?

What free market is that exactly? I can't see a nurse for my medical needs without paying a doctor. I can't buy the drugs I need without a prescription. I can't cut people's hair without getting a license. I can't shoot a film without the cops shutting me down unless I have the tens of thousands the studios pay for permits. And on and on and on.
And don't blame a free market you and I've never seen in our lifetimes for the ills of the economy. The manipulation of interest rates, wall street bailouts and the housing bubble got us here to begin with, and that was 100% socially engineered. Time to renew your platitudes.

>> ^dystopianfuturetoday:

The free market crowd said that lowering taxes, privatization and deregulation would create jobs and grow the economy. We've done all that and we are now suffering massive income inequality, massive unemployment and recession. How many times do we have to bang our head against the wall before we figure out that free market politics don't work, never have and never will?


What free market is that exactly? I can't see a nurse for my medical needs without paying a doctor. I can't buy the drugs I need without a prescription. I can't cut people's hair without getting a license. I can't shoot a film without the cops shutting me down unless I have the tens of thousands the studios pay for permits. And on and on and on.

And don't blame a free market you and I've never seen in our lifetimes for the ills of the economy. The manipulation of interest rates, wall street bailouts and the housing bubble got us here to begin with, and that was 100% socially engineered. Time to renew your platitudes.

>> ^Lawdeedaw:
How did the debate become so simple? Raise taxes, build unions and universal healthcare versus cut taxes, free-market, personal responsibility. Does everything break down to this high school level prom-running event?
Call it pessimism or fatalism (Which it is not since I am trying to affect change for the better) but we complain like Rome when it fell--not like we should, not in a healthy way...
Sorry for the rant, which this last section was.


That post was packed to the gills with ideas, so forgive me for only trying to really respond to this one.

From where I sit, left vs. right is really about complexity vs. simplicity. It winds up being a binary choice, mostly because the right is unified behind a ridiculously simplistic philosophy (erase the government and life will be awesome), while every other possible idea gets lumped together as being "left".

Want to talk about policy we can put in place to make markets more efficient? Left-wing social engineering. Want to try to systematically cure poverty? Socialist, or maybe Communist. Want to try to find a way to keep us from killing ourselves with pollution? Nazi, clearly. Want to end wars, well, unless it's because you don't think government should have the power, you're obviously some kind of dirty hippie.

That accounts for a lot of the differences between the left & right political movements. We're mostly unified by being anti-right, rather than some idea of what we want to do. We'd probably still have trouble getting bills passed through Congress even if every seat was held by a Democrat.

I dont agree with any form of social engineering.

Lyrics:


Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Black and yellow [x4]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Black and yellow [x4]

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]

[Verse 1:]
Black flag, yellow star, them commies scared of it, got my war paint
Soon as I hit the forum, crack keynes, instant faint
Hit the podium once make them liberals shake
State inflates, now the prices soaring
A failed policy, you know the people payed for it
And you know we dig them precious metals
We callin on your horseshit game we balling out on every level
Hear them statists talk but there's nothing you can tell 'em
Fed prints a trillion, got another trillion on their schedule
No love for central planners breaking hearts
No state, free market art

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray , I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]

[Verse 2:]
Got a call from Tom Woods, this just in
Bitches love me for my non-aggressive means and ends
Neo-Lockean? Maybe. The market's free, yo.
This ain't the new deal, it's the real deal no joe blow
I'm sipping Four Loko and puffin on the ganja
You social engineers will never stop the marijuana
Statists act like bitches, Tyler Perry
I ball out while Ron Paul does some commentary

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray , I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]


[Verse 3:]
Stay praxeological like I'm supposed to do
Broken window fallacy, them Keynesians cant get over you
And our crew look unapproachable
We're with Rothbard, Bitch, we go hard

They wanna fuck with the market, monopolize, constrict, get high, talk shit and that's that Real crap, depression but, they said we wouldn't feel that, they took the blue pill, or must just be on crack

[Chorus:]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
(emotional appeals ain't shit, it all comes back to economics, bitch)
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]
Yeah, uh huh, you know what it is
Everything we do, we do it big
Beat up on Paul Krugman, that's nothin




Transcend Mises at twenty, that's stunin
Repping my school when you see me you know everything
Black and yellow [x4]
I put it down for my man Murray, I'm in
Black and yellow [x4]