anyone else see and like "The Adventures of Baron Munchausen" ?
(the 1988 Terry Gilliam one, not the 1943 one)

The robber-baron's dream has been a reality for centuries sir, they simply have more weapons at their disposal with which to imagine the reality they are creating for our futures.

Governments are always evil and we should all live in peaceful little anarchist communities instead? Sounds like robber baron's wet dream to me.

This one reminds me always of the organ that Peter Jeffery the Sultan had in Baron Von Munchausen- Torturer's Apprentice
http://videosift.com/video/The-Torturer-s-Apprentice

Your video, the prison industrial complex-the new robber barons, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Full clip here, including his "acceptance speech" (which I thought was the best bit). http://www.frequency.com/video/sacha-baron-cohen-kills-presenter/130692170/-/5-1411

If you are really surprised that the US and Canadian government has been trying to shut down climate science because the oil barons pay them too, you haven't been paying attention.

For people who have not had their hands dirty every year in a garden plot or larger operation for sustenance or other, you'd be hard-pressed to have much "imminent" fear of the future of food crops. One of the main reasons I seek to expatriate from the the U.S. has to do with availability of fresh, healthy, unadulterated foods that are not cost-prohibitive. The corporate food-barons of the planet are fucking you, and fucking you harder than you realize. They are plugging in dangerous data to your meat, and the meat of your offspring. It's an insidious form of slavery and eugenics with a human cost never before seen in earth's history one could imagine. Maybe, in some unrecorded pre-history we fucked the planet out of healthy food before but, I seriously doubt this....

Availability of the basics to life as a mammalian birthright is now being adjusted through engineering by douchebags, and we are all complicit.
Volcanic isles provide the best natural defense against humanity's inhumanity to man meaning, there is nothing that grows in that soil that is not good for you, or near a volcanic island that doesn't swim free-Factor-in chaotic-to-amazing weather, right-livelihood, and the absence of Americans, and you have my retirement plan.

I cleaned up my multiple rants. So sorry for the wall of text.

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It's because of guys like the one in the video that I laugh when people are they're Libertarian. I think they're overall idea is nice and dandy, but much like steadfast religious people who don't actually know their theology and how it would actually play out in reality, this guy contradicts himself by the end.

Especially his private defense agencies . . . except, ALL of those solutions are paid for by the government OR by private agencies to take away the liberties from those whom they see as their subjects. But then again, the initiation of force is immoral . . . so any defense agency is immoral, whether it's government funded or not.

And you don't need a fire department because private companies make fire sprinklers? Except, the reason fire sprinklers are everywhere now is because the government forced builders to use them after the free market allowed cities to burn down and hundreds if not thousands to die because of their lack of use. Yes, private companies solve all social issues . . .

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Wait?? Did he really just say the original Robber Baron's lowered prices to be "competitive" and drive each other out of the market?? Wow . . . They lowered prices to put others out of business by raising prices where they already had a monopoly. It wasn't competitive at all. It was a monopoly so they could game the system and raise prices afterwards. There was no competition whatsoever. It was who could butter the hands of the Prices and Kings to get the most lucrative exclusive deal which eventually led to those countries rebelling by forcibly taking over those oils companies and nationalizing. Those stories are EXACTLY why the US has Anti-Trust laws . . .

And for the record, Steve Jobs was ousted from Apple because he spent too much money trying to make the US factories pretty on the inside and never wanted to move to China. It was a board of directors decision and overall, Apple hasn't been the worse offender overseas. It's not the greatest record, but hell, it's not the Wal-Mart suppliers that LOCKED their workers in a unsafe building they knew would catch on fire or crumble. Or both. But hey, free market baby!


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WTF, Government FORCED business owners to segregate? Or could it simply be the RACISTS that refused to serve "coloreds" and their white politicians who had lucrative deals by being in government, so to get elected they passed laws against blacks.

And public education is responsible for racism? So these rich white people who NEVER went to public school were racists because of public education . . . . Holy shit this guy is a loon.

Just because the school is funded by the government doesn't mean the people teaching there aren't racists, or the society itself is racist. Or that there were MANY whites who were against racism and who fought alongside blacks to end racism and to give equal access, without ANY financial incentive whatsoever. Matter of fact, many people SUFFERED financially for standing up for the rights of others.

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.

We're reverting to a semi-feudal state the world over, with dynastic land barons extracting rents from serfs who were unlucky enough to be born without that rarest and ever-dwindling commodity, property.

Everyone has a right to own their own home. There should be strict limits on private and corporate land ownership to prevent hoarding, and prospective parents should be required to ensure their children will have somewhere to live when they're grown, or remain barren.

Responsible governments would implement population control to reverse this constantly growing pressure that's crushing the life out of our children, and solve so many other problems besides.

"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience...."

clearly there can be no realistic compromise i will take joy as you use your gun to shoot a virus you cant see, or to force a doctor to use their training to save someone you shot on accident, and other scenarios where having a gun doesn't mean shit if you dont have other people to help you.... lets all shoot ourselves, you first!

That's interesting. In his Democracy in America Vol 2, Chapter XX "HOW AN ARISTOCRACY MAY BE CREATED BY MANUFACTURES", Baron de Tocqueville warned of these dangers (in 1840!):

In proportion as the principle of the division of labor is more
extensively applied, the workman becomes more weak, more
narrow-minded, and more dependent. The art advances, the arti-
san recedes. On the other hand, in proportion as it becomes more
manifest that the productions of manufactures are by so much the
cheaper and better as the manufacture is larger and the amount
of capital employed more considerable, wealthy and educated
men come forward to embark in manufactures, which were here-
tofore abandoned to poor or ignorant handicraftsmen. The mag-
nitude of the efforts required and the importance of the results to
be obtained attract them. Thus at the very time at which the sci-
ence of manufactures lowers the class of workmen, it raises the
class of masters.

While the workman concentrates his faculties more and more
upon the study of a single detail, the master surveys an extensive
whole, and the mind of the latter is enlarged in proportion as that
of the former is narrowed. In a short time the one will require
nothing but physical strength without intelligence; the other
stands in need of science, and almost of genius, to ensure success.
This man resembles more and more the administrator of a vast
empire; that man, a brute.

The master and the workman have then here no similarity, and
their differences increase every day. They are connected only like
the two rings at the extremities of a long chain. Each of them fills
the station which is made for him, and which he does not leave;
the one is continually, closely, and necessarily dependent upon the
other and seems as much born to obey as that other is to com-
mand. What is this but aristocracy?

Then in Vol 3, Chapter VI, "WHAT SORT OF DESPOTISM DEMOCRATIC NATIONS HAVE TO FEAR" he goes on, describing a situation where a democratic nation has become
subject to a despotic government, and when the people give up and stop participating in democracy:

Subjection in minor affairs breaks out every day and is felt by
the whole community indiscriminately. It does not drive men to
resistance, but it crosses them at every turn, till they are led to
surrender the exercise of their own will. Thus their spirit is grad-
ually broken and their character enervated; whereas that obedi-
ence which is exacted on a few important but rare occasions only
exhibits servitude at certain intervals and throws the burden of it
upon a small number of men. It is in vain to summon a people
who have been rendered so dependent on the central power to
choose from time to time the representatives of that power; this
rare and brief exercise of their free choice, however important it
may be, will not prevent them from gradually losing the faculties
of thinking, feeling, and acting for themselves, and thus gradually
falling below the level of humanity.

Or in other words, once you have managed to oppress the people of a democratic nation, the very equality that defines a democratic nation leaves them powerless and unable to organise together and throw off their chains.

Awww Freddie. What an artist!!!

Slightly off topic, Sacha Baron Cohen is doing a Freddie Mercury biopic... Strangely, I can see it working.

You know, that's exactly the issue they fought the civil war over starting in 1861. Seven of the Southern states agreed with you, and 25 Northern states were dead against it, and raised armies on the basis of preserving the Union.

The Baron de Tocqueville spent a bit of time talking about secession in his 1835 book Democracy in America, correctly picking that it was the Southern states most likely to try and also that they would be the most harmed by doing so. Some of his other predictions were less successful, he didn't expect the Federal Government would be able to quell a popular uprising, he thought the Union would split apart instead.
In reply to this comment by pyloricvalve:
Sorry I don't get it. What's wrong with this idea? If states could secede you could have a more diverse set of regimes and people could choose more the style of government they prefer by moving state... It seems like quite a good idea. I'm not an American so maybe I'm missing something but why is there animosity about people suggesting the idea? I don't mean to provoke. I'm just curious...