Just pointing out that I think it's dishonest to be a statist and deride others for being statists, statist.

Thanks for telling me that you fill out a W9, live in LA, and that you're an author; and letting me know that that information is none of my business. How contradictory of you. Statist liberloon.

Although it's fun pointing out you calling the kettle black, it's not necessarily personal grudge. I believe that libertarianism and white-washing of regulations is a bad thing. Look at Pakistan. It's no Somalia in terms of a libertarian paradise, but it's not far off:
http://tribune.com.pk/story/538217/poor-regulation/

^Pakistan is a country riddled with a lack of regulation, yet the poor keep getting poorer there, and the rich keep getting richer.

People who are destitute enough, do have alternatives that are not afforded to them here in the States though, they can sell their organs:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/feb/10/pakistan.declanwalsh

OH TO BE FREE! to sell your organs...

If you do end up getting sick, you can always turn to the largely unregulated drug industry: http://www.aljazeera.com/video/asia/2012/01/201212775512528261.html

FREEDOM! to produce dangerous drugs on a mass scale... Hey! That's kindof like those kids who died from the polio vaccination that was privately funded and not regulated: http://www.sfgate.com/health/article/When-polio-vaccine-backfired-Tainted-batches-2677525.php

It's kind of like...ohhh I wasn't gonna post this again, but what the heck:

I assume it's exactly the fact that such a "special" relationship with politicians and regulators exists that's the problem and moreover that these are exactly the sort of thing market controls are needed to prevent (even if the existing ones have largely been co-opted to serve the Plutocrats).

If you want to define "free-market"as completely free and unregulated then yes this is not a free market, however what regulation we do have is by this stage so ineffectual and corrupt that basically all the problems with a true "free-market" have already very much manifested.
That said I think I'm actually agreeing with you here, we might even say we have the worst of both worlds where the colossally rich have the market "freedom" do do what they like but can also co-opt socialist regulation to both defend themselves and aggressively suppress and exploit potential threats from the lower end of the economy.

The argument I guess is because SevenFingers is using the term "free-market" in a much more pejorative sense here than yourself. To him I'm guessing it simply means largely unopposed Plutocracy i.e. the misused existing regulation etc. is a product of an unregulated market running amok and corrupting every institution it can get its hands on.

If this is indeed the case then you only have a problem with incompatible semantics (meaning is use).
The real argument you guy's should be having is whether moving towards a Randian "true free-market" would make this situation any better or worse. Personally I can't see how this would make things anything other than worse for the vast majority of us.
In my head a true free market would basically be akin to just giving up and putting Weyland Yutani in charge, because sooner or later that's what you'd get. Atlas Shrugged made me sick to my stomach!

I propose the solution lies in replacing our existing systems of government and regulation with something both stronger and more importantly 100% transparent. In the age of the internet we could make political corruption virtually impossible and the old capitalist vs collectivist paradigm is becoming old, tired & increasingly irrelevant.

Time for a higher synthesis and a new dialectic cycle.
The thesis was anarcho-capitalism,
The antithesis was Totalitarian socialism
The synthesis is Meritocratic socio-capitalism!

(M) for the Movement
(M) for Meritocracy
(M) for Mindlessly repeated slogans!

0:06 - Is government the antithesis of liberty?

0:47 - One of the things that enhances freedoms are roads. Infrastructure enhances freedom. A social safety net enhances freedom.

2:02 - What should we do with the losers that are picked by the free market?

3:38 - Do we live in a society or don't we? Are we a collective? Everybody's success is predicated on the hard work of all of us; nobody gets there on their own. Why should it be that the people who lose are hung out to dry? For a group that doesn't believe in evolution, it's awfully Darwinian.

5:41 - In a representative democracy, we are the government. We have work to do, and we have a business to run, and we have children to raise.. We elect you as our representatives to look after our interests within a democratic system.

7:41 - Is government inherently evil?

9:03 - Sometimes to protect the greater liberty you have to do things like form an army, or gather a group together to build a wall or levy.

9:47 - As soon as you've built an army, you've now said government isn't always inherently evil because we need it to help us sometimes, so now.. it's that old joke: Would you sleep with me for a million dollars? How about a dollar? Who do you think I am? We already decided who you are, now we're just negotiating.

10:54 - You say: government which governs least governments best. But that were the Articles of Confederation. We tried that for 8 years, it didn't work, and went to the Constitution.

11:16 - You give money to the IRS because you think they're gonna hire a bunch of people, that if your house catches on fire, will come there with water.

11:56 - Why is it that libertarians trust a corporation, in certain matters, more than they trust representatives that are accountable to voters? The idea that I would give up my liberty to an insurance company, as opposed to my representative, seems insane.

13:38 - Why is it that with competition, we have such difficulty with our health care system? ...and there are choices within the educational system.

15:00 - Would you go back to 1890?

16:20 - If we didn't have government, we'd all be in hovercrafts, and nobody would have cancer, and broccoli would be ice-cream?

16:30 - Unregulated markets have been tried. The 80's and the 90's were the robber baron age. These regulations didn't come out of an interest in restricting liberty. What they did is came out of an interest in helping those that had been victimized by a system that they couldn't fight back against.

19:04 - Why do you think workers that worked in the mines unionized?

20:13 - Without the government there are no labor unions, because they would be smashed by Pinkerton agencies or people hired, or even sometimes the government.

20:24 - Would the free market have desegregated restaurants in the South, or would the free market have done away with miscegenation, if it had been allowed to? Would Marten Luther King have been less effective than the free market? Those laws sprung up out of a majority sense of, in that time, that blacks should not... The free market there would not have supported integrated lunch counters.

23:23 - Government is necessary but must be held accountable for its decisions.

You asked how bad ideas can be oppressive and I think I told you. We can consider these things intellectually; thinking and reasoning does produce evidence.

I don't know if I have to remind you, I shouldn't have to, but I'm not the guy from the video. Our opinions are not the same.

There's really no such thing as women. It's not a useful category, vast and arbitrary as it is. The characteristics of women are those of all humanity; no traits emerge to distinguish those groups. Biological sex is a trivial marker, not substantially different from hair color or whether you can curl your tongue, and gender is a personal construct. There's nothing to be said about women that doesn't apply to everyone - so what does feminism have to say? Nothing.

The phenomenon of men as the oppressor of women, so far as it exists, is just a silly little anthropological quirk of our social evolution. It's not something to be taken seriously. There are a hundred worse ways in which unregulated instinctual behaviours are damaging our society every day.

@shatterdrose the 1% pushed government "aside"... what does that even mean? Are you fantasizing that the economy has been largely unregulated all this time, and that's why the 1% get their way?

Wouldn't it make more sense for you to make the connection that our government is FREAKISHLY HUGE and indebted, and that the terrible injustices in our economy result from massive government intervention in almost every aspect of it, bogging it down, wasting precious resources, destroying the value of our money, promoting wealth inequality... and not the other way around?

People don't hate the 1% just because they're rich, but because they're getting rich unfairly, with the help of government. *Government* is a big part of that equation.

You are so mistaken about the concepts you're trying to explain to me, it's hilarious!

Communism is not about means of production being owned by the state, the utopian concept itself is about a stateless society that is somehow reached through Socialism (Communism doesn't exist outside of theory, so don't worry your pretty little head about it). In Socialism, the State owns the means of production, it owns almost everything, mostly because the State doesn't recognize private property. You can say it "belongs to the people" all you want, but without private property, it belongs to whoever has a say into what should happen with it, i.e., the State. Democracy hasn't the faintest connection with any of this, because voting doesn't make you part of government.

I agree with you in general. However this was not only the footage of a fatal accident. This was posted as a warning, a PSA if you will, of an unregulated and dangerous sport by people that were this man's friends. If you can only show the thrill videos of success in dangerous sports and not the consequences when things don't go as planned, how can we as the watchers of said videos expect to learn from them. I know that my point of view will be unpopular here on the sift, but I learned something valuable from this post.

@dystopianfutetoday
excellent question and is exactly where the discussion should be.

understand i am not against regulations i.e:background checks,licenses etc etc
i also think a gun safety course should be mandatory.responsible gun safety is just being a good citizen and neighbor.

have a mental illness with a record of violence? sorry.no guns for you.
convicted of a violent crime? no guns for you either.
but these regulations are already in place and responsible gun owners are..well...responsible.

so where is the argument REALLY centered?
unregulated .or more accurately put: weakly regulated gun shows and who benefits from these gun shows? gun manufacturers.
and where do they get their political clout? NRA.where those who are already blocked from gun purchase can skirt the system and the NRA can hide behind the second amendment.

that sound like a fairly accurate assesment?

now..onto your direct question on the downside of only the police and military being armed.
simply put: i do not trust authority or to be more precise,i do not trust power because power begets more power and seeks only to retain its own power which will always lead to you losing your power of self determination in the end.

america was never designed to have a standing army and their are articles that espouse the ending of the republic if we tried.here we are going on 60 years with a standing army.how is that working out for us?

bush had his illegal wars and surveillence and obama has his assasinations.

the police,which was born from the old town sheriffs were put in place to enforce this new and noble idea america had "all equal under law".a local citizenry trained to enforce the law and protect this "property ownership" another new and novel approach to society.

what do we have now?
defense money being spent on SWAT teams who now have high powered assault weapons and tanks...TANKS!..FFS.

do i really have to make a list?
waco
ruby ridge
the list is not short.

do you see where i am going with this?
i am not speaking about right and wrong.
i am pointing to the hypocrisy.
this is about elementary morality.
i totally agree with you that violence begets violence but if we are going to take away peoples right to own guns then we need to take them away from the police as well.

because just as some seriously damaged people have wrought death and suffering,so to has our very own government officials.
having the power of the government behind their actions does NOT make it more morally acceptable.

on a personal note i find the politicizing of the sandy hook school shooting so fucking despicable and grotesque that i literally shake with rage.this goes out to both sides of this political whoring.
the NRA can go fuck itself with a dirty razor-bladed dildo and the tree-hugging,pussified everybody-wants-to-bugger-my-lil-jonny scaredy cats can go fuck off as well.

i do not carry a gun nor am i interesting in owning one but i will fight for your right to own one.they are a weapon and as such should be monitored and regulated,but they should not be banned due to a giant fear storm and an over-abundance of "what if" pontificating.

who wants to live in a minority report world?not me.
most gun owners are responsible.
most police are good at what they do.
do not let the statistics arguments allow you to give up more of your rights.

but if we are going to protest i will be there with not a single weapon on me.

@renatojj Ah, its nice to be called a socialist for once. Where I come from, they call me a right wing capitalist
Any economic system is as cooperative as the next. That is the definition of an economic system, a system where economic transactions take place, ie cooperation. So capitalism is NOT more (or less) cooperative than other isms. (And mercantilism and corporate capitalism (corporatism right?) are forms of capitalism ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism)

Definition of capitalism:
"an economic and political system in which a country’s trade and industry are controlled by private owners for profit, rather than by the state" - oxford dictionary
Emphasis is on "for profit". So yes, all capitalist are per definition profit seeking. Relentless is something that follows Darwin. Those who are more relentless get higher profits and have more money to grow, invest, invent, etc. They eventually push out less relentless profit seekers so the relentless ones are the only ones left.
And remember you said them first, not me. I just said that capitalism tries to achieve profit and as competition drives prices down one way to do so is to minimize cost, ie become more efficient. So there is always a drive for efficiency in capitalism.
I am not against profit seeking, I believe that capitalism is the system that pushes the most growth in most regions, be it economic growth, technological progress, etc. That also makes it a rat race, where you continually need to go faster to keep up. As I am getting older I see that running is not the only game in town. And in most cases it detracts from happiness more then other methods in the long run (though it brings more wealth). Given also the finite resource problem and it is a good discussion to have if capitalism is the best and only economic system we should have on this planet. Like I said, for another time.

"The Libor and derivatives markets scandals, are not examples of free markets at all, they're abuses where the bad behavior was encouraged by policy"

What? What policy? The entire idea of over-the-counter (OTT, the largest amount by far) derivatives was that they are traded without any supervision or visibility. Complete free market! That and the inability to value and understand the risk per unit made for instance the Credit Default Swaps so dangerous. These were perfectly legal, and are still in most cases. The market is still unregulated today. You can argue that in the end it wasnt a free market because they got bailed out. Bullshit. They got bailed out because the other option was to let the entire economic system collapse. Letting the system collapse is not free markets, its stupid. The damage would have been catastrophic. The markets wouldnt repair that, they wouldnt exist anymore. That is why people call the derivatives market an example of a free market that should have been more regulated, because they had the power to destroy everything and the incentive to take the risk (for profit).
The way the bailout happened (and is still happening) is total and utter crap, but that is a different story all together.

Which leads again to the same question: if not the (IMHO obvious) derivatives market, name me an example of a free market?

@renatojj So you are saying you cant be threatened economically? Off course you can be. Damage can be economical or mental too. There is no reason to exclude those. Far from it, you can argue these are in the end physical too.
Force is not required to be physical in this process.
What you need is leverage, ie something that the other needs. If you are the giver of a job that that other person needs and it is difficult for him to find it elsewhere, you are in a position of power without any other need of force. If you own a well in a desert you are the most powerful man without any force. And you can coerce people to do your bidding for them to receive water. No force required, just threat.

On right to have a job. The thousands of philosophers, lawyers, human rights activists, politicians, etc that worked on the UDHR just believe that without the job, people will starve, ie will die, ie will get a right offended. Hence, they need a job. And thats is were coercion comes in. The NEED (not the right) to have a job to survive (or at least live on a "decent" level in your society) Coercion isnt about having or not having a job. Its about the threat of not getting it / losing it and accepting things you would otherwise not. Discussing whether or not someone is suitable for a job is besides the point, as we are all unsuitable for the job we have in some form or other. So unskilled, incompetent, dispensable, these are all point of view based. In a world of geniuses you and me would be unsuitable for anything. But are we really? Off course not, just like every tree, flower, bacteria and animal has a role, so does every person.

On coercion: by a child's psychological manipulation? For sure. (Check with any parent and they will readily agree ) What about a person you're in love with? Yes off course. What about a guy who is more qualified for a job than you are, is he coercing you out of that position? No. He nor you has the job to give. The coercion comes when your boss says to work 12 hours a day and get paid for 8 because someone else might be better and he might give that person the job.

On justifying anything government does: you make assumptions I dont follow. Punish coercion -> using force -> more social injustice.
If it is coercion and we define coercion is something bad, isnt it justified to do something against it? You can do something against it with or without force, but even if it is done with force (meaning someone somewhere gets his freedoms lessened) again, isnt that justified to stop him or her being able to coerce someone as that is bad? Its like saying government cant stop someone from shooting someone because that would lessen the freedom of the shooter. I would define social injustice not as the max rights of that individual but of the max rights of the whole population. So not "using force" would lead to social injustice.

On laziness: You are right. If you are not careful, setting up rules that protect the weak can make them complacent. Its a balancing act. If you set no rules, ie free market, you open them up to abuse. If you set too many rules, they can become less eager to be the best they can be. BTW I dont call that lazy. There is a larger argument to make here, about the goals of capitalism (More and more efficiency, ever growing and ever improving) or about more soft lifestyles that would not be as efficient but might in the end bring more happiness. A topic for another time.

On the UDHR: I guess we want to achieve the same, we just disagree on the way to get there. I structurally dont believe free markets will get us there, as in every real case free markets have proven to be unreliable because people will abuse their powers and create too much inequality. There are so many examples (LIBOR, the entire financial derivatives markets, basically all unregulated markets) that I can ask this:
can you give me 1 example of a market that is run truly free that worked for a longer period of time?

I agree with everything he says, but blaming (a non-existant) economic freedom for abuses in the banking sector is like blaming freedom of religion for islamic fundamentalists.

The "unregulated free market" is the usual scapegoat, when it's neither unregulated nor a free market. The banking industry is poorly but still highly regulated, which is why banking crooks so easily abuse their monopolies because regulation is what keeps competition out, and they use their political connections with said regulators to get away with their fraud. The excessive regulation is what denies us any alternative to crooked bankers and manipulated currencies.

The government shouldn't be involved in banking at all, let people regulate banks.

Unless you are trying to kill yourself the main reason why people overdose is because of substances being unregulated because of the drug war. So because of one overdose they do a drug war sting resulting in 100 more people's lives being messed up. Oh the irony.

It's easy to blame the banks, because the banks and other financial institutions donate/bribe politicians into making it happen. So if they are regulated by law, and can't benefit from this kind of policy, then they won't bribe politicians for it.

And yes, I realize working around corruption shouldn't be tolerated, but laws limiting the power of corruption is just as important as eliminating corruption. Without the limitations you invite more and more corruption through unregulated business and decisions related to them.

Just like the government is founded on the idea of 3 branches of the government limiting each other, business is limited by regulation and society, government is regulated by it's 3 branches and society. Removing the regulations is taking away checks and balances.

Much as all of the new laws and acts tieing different branches and departments of the government together for the sake of the "wars on terrorism/drugs/whatever" is taking away limitations and checks and balances within government.

Sensible guidelines to work within should be the norm, until they show detriment to society. The regulations on banks never threatened society that I've ever seen demonstrated. The reasons were always basically "because it needs to be done!"....much like power company regulations and phone company regulations after being reduced or removed have let to outrageous price increases and quality of service dropping like a rock. They do it all in the name of keeping and making more money, and there's no one but other huge banks/corporations to threaten them.

More Adam Smith goodness: (from wikipedia)


"The subjects of every state ought to contribute towards the support of the government, as nearly as possible, in proportion to their respective abilities; that is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively enjoy under the protection of the state."[118]

Moreover, in this passage Smith goes on to specify progressive, not flat, taxation:

"The rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion"[119]

"Every tax, however, is, to the person who pays it, a badge, not of slavery, but of liberty."[120]

no one except the far left fringe is against capitalism, it's unregulated capitalism that most people have a problem with.

Below is a copy of the email I sent to Vic Toews, the sponsor of this terrible legislation. I again suggest that all thoughtful Canadians contact their Member of Parliament to voice their concerns.

MP's email addresses and other contact information can be found here: http://www.parl.gc.ca/MembersOfParliament/MainMPsCompleteList.aspx?TimePeriod=Current&Language=E

Dear Mr. Toews;

Thanks for taking the time to send an automated response to the automated email I had previously sent to you. In contrast to our previous correspondenced, this email represents my considered position and thoughts as a citizen of Canada, and not those of a robo-responder, nor of a political staff.

In response to the "Myths and Facts" listed below your correspondence, I respectfully submit that I don't buy a word of it. There's a common expression used to describe information which is not representative of the truth, which I'm sure that, coming as you do from an agricultural area like Provencher, you are quite familiar with. It's commonly used to fertilize pasture-land.

Bill C-30 is a poorly written, overly broad and dangerous piece of legislation. One thing which has been demonstrated over and over again is that when delegated powers that intrude on privacy, those in authority inevitably will abuse them. I have no doubt that the power resulting from C-30 will likewise be abused, and that it will, contrary to your statements, be used for non-criminal purposes. This legislation is fatally flawed and should be abandoned forthwith.

I'd also like to point out that though I vehemently oppose this legislation, I am certainly not "...with the child pornographers". I find your characterization of myself and other thoughtful Canadians to be offensive in the extreme. You remain unrepentant for this despicable comment, instead denying making it though one finds it readilly available in video and in Hansard. I would hope that at some time you might offer an apology to myself and those Canadians who might not agree with you. I suggest to you that it is un-Canadian to use such extremist rhetoric.


Paul Blank
Vancouver, Canada


From: vic.toews.c1@parl.gc.ca
To: xxxx
Date: Tue, 13 Mar 2012 10:47:02 -0400
Subject: RE: Stop Online Spying

Thank you for contacting my office regarding Bill C-30, the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act.

Canada's laws currently do not adequately protect Canadians from online exploitation and we think there is widespread agreement that this is a problem.

We want to update our laws while striking the right balance between combating crime and protecting privacy.

Let me be very clear: the police will not be able to read emails or view web activity unless they obtain a warrant issued by a judge and we have constructed safeguards to protect the privacy of Canadians, including audits by privacy commissioners.

What's needed most is an open discussion about how to better protect Canadians from online crime. We will therefore send this legislation directly to Parliamentary Committee for a full examination of the best ways to protect Canadians while respecting their privacy.

For your information, I have included some myths and facts below regarding Bill C-30 in its current state.

Sincerely,



Vic Toews

Member of Parliament for Provencher

Myth: Lawful Access legislation infringes on the privacy of Canadians.
Fact: Our Government puts a high priority on protecting the privacy of law-abiding Canadians. Current practices of accessing the actual content of communications with a legal authorization will not change.

Myth: Having access to basic subscriber information means that authorities can monitor personal communications and activities.
Fact: This has nothing to do with monitoring emails or web browsing. Basic subscriber information would be limited to a customer’s name, address, telephone number, email address, Internet Protocol (IP) address, and the name of the telecommunications service provider. It absolutely does not include the content of emails, phones calls or online activities.

Myth: This legislation does not benefit average Canadians and only gives authorities more power.
Fact: As a result of technological innovations, criminals and terrorists have found ways to hide their illegal activities. This legislation will keep Canadians safer by putting police on the same footing as those who seek to harm us.



Myth: Basic subscriber information is way beyond “phone book information”.
Fact: The basic subscriber information described in the proposed legislation is the modern day equivalent of information that is in the phone book. Individuals frequently freely share this information online and in many cases it is searchable and quite public.

Myth: Police and telecommunications service providers will now be required to maintain databases with information collected on Canadians.
Fact: This proposed legislation will not require either police or telecommunications service providers to create databases with information collected on Canadians.

Myth: “Warrantless access” to customer information will give police and government unregulated access to our personal information.
Fact: Federal legislation already allows telecommunications service providers to voluntarily release basic subscriber information to authorities without a warrant. This Bill acts as a counterbalance by adding a number of checks and balances which do not exist today, and clearly lists which basic subscriber identifiers authorities can access.

You are the world's biggest fool if you pay for bottled tap water in bottles shipped across the country from Coca Cola bottling plants. It is exactly Coke without the sugar and coloring.

With the minimalist carbon filter, any US tap water is way better than any untested, unregulated bottled water that bakes in warehouses in plastic containers.

It is the same municipal water in all of these sources, plus you are using up oil and destroying our roads when you subsidize shipping bullshit water to your grocery store because you want to pay an idiot tax.