First of all I do respect you for defending yourself quantumushroom, Sorry about the cheap jab earlier.

No biggie.

Hate to oversimplify, but generally, when government gets involved, costs for everyone go up and innovation suffers. When government practices the lost art of 'benign neglect', the free market rapidly punishes and rewards ideas. People do more when you allow them to keep more of what they earn.

As the necessary evil it is, government has vital, mandated roles, such as protecting the borders and enforcing private property rights.

Battling child obesity, making smokers second class citizens (while spending tobacco tax revenue), providing "free" healthcare and making land owners get 'permission' to chop down a tree on their own property are not legitimate government functions. Nor can the buffoons "run" markets, except into the ground.

Right now, the federal mafia is simply too damned big, and they don't know what they're doing, just as FDR didn't know the long-term effects of his alphabet soup agencies that are STILL with us. Yes, you won't budge; just be aware there is evidence FDR's policies prolonged the Depression. Or you can merely observe today's scamulus doing nothing.

As blankfist can point out better than me, the Federal Reserve is about to print another trillion dollars, making the money in your wallet and savings account less valuable.

The left has an important part in this narrative; I just disagree with their conclusions.

>> ^blankfist:

As far as I'm concerned the minimal the government should offer is fire, police, roads and jails, and if this man is paying local, state and property tax, he was due this coverage.
>> ^blankfist:

So under your beautifully crafted socialist utopia that man's house could still burn down and there's not a fucking thing he can do about it.

You two should have a long talk, and try to work this out.

Kidding aside, you're really missing the point here. I, and many liberals, disagree with the Supreme Court on lots of things, past and present. I'm also not really all that interested in the narrow question of legal findings in the US court system, but the universal moral questions this situation raises, all of which you've refused to engage.

You say that these fire fighters shouldn't have let the fire burn. Why shouldn't they?

The fire fighters don't owe the man anything, he didn't pay his fee. They don't offer out-of-pocket service, it's $75 on time, or it's burn motherfucker burn. It would make business sense if they offered an out of pocket service, but they don't, and forcing them to do so would be slavery (just like forcing shop keepers to serve black people if they don't want to).

If anything, Gene Cranick's pleading and complaining is really the moral outrage -- he thinks he was owed better treatment than he got!

What moral code are you following to imply that this fire department has done anything wrong? It's most certainly not libertarian, because if you really cared about property rights, you would understand that this is how things had to be.

@Xax, I could easily turn that back around -- why is it abhorrent if there's so much moral weight behind property rights working that way?

I would say the reason liberals think the rights break in favor of the customer is because our conception of liberty is an egalitarian one. Everyone should be free to shop wherever they want, so long as they don't individually do something to earn the ire of the proprietor.

Wow the irony of your statement is astounding! You engage in partial-truth statements about another group of people in order to try and make your party look better all the while insulting them and trying to reflect your own ignorance upon them. I find it a pathetic attempt at social politics in order to supposedly benefit your group. The problem is that many people see through your little charade. Unfortunately many do not and that's what you prey upon.

Since I was previously a democrat I have a good idea what they are about. There are moralistic qualities that are admirable however they are misguided in many ways as well. I like many of the philosophies of the libertarian group however I don't agree with all of them there either. Your assumption that libertarians would prefer seeing the black man thrown on the street and refused service is rediculous and absurd. You're merely trying to play a race card that really isn't there. I find that many will use the race card when it's their only avenue of recourse. This is VERY pathetic and it actually hurts your cause when you do this.

BTW, nobody likes the Ferengi.


>> ^NetRunner:

But you are confused. You don't understand what liberals are about.
By way of illustration, I'll say it again: I believe this non-DeLancie Q is absolutely correct. I'll go even further, any liberal who disagrees with it is not really a liberal.
Where we differ is that libertarians say "individual rights" means property rights and nothing else, while liberals realize that doesn't protect our basic rights as individuals at all.
My common example these days would be the old practice of businesses refusing to serve blacks. Libertarians think that as far as rights are concerned, the discriminating shop owner has a right to do it, and has a legitimate expectation that law enforcement will uphold his right to do so, right down to physically removing black people from his store if necessary.
To liberals, the issue of rights breaks the other way.
If you are interested in learning about the political philosophy of liberals, read this and its follow-up.
If you just want to be a mindless jerk who constantly refuses to look at what he's so busy insulting, just keep behaving as you always do.

>> ^blankfist:
Libertarianism is liberalism. You statists coopted the term and made it a lie. You are not a real liberal. You're a "someone created a wikipedia page calling Democrats liberals" liberal. Therefore, you are correct that this is a general liberal philosophy. But you're incorrect when you claim I'm the one that's confused.


But you are confused. You don't understand what liberals are about.

By way of illustration, I'll say it again: I believe this non-DeLancie Q is absolutely correct. I'll go even further, any liberal who disagrees with it is not really a liberal.

Where we differ is that libertarians say "individual rights" means property rights and nothing else, while liberals realize that doesn't protect our basic rights as individuals at all.

My common example these days would be the old practice of businesses refusing to serve blacks. Libertarians think that as far as rights are concerned, the discriminating shop owner has a right to do it, and has a legitimate expectation that law enforcement will uphold his right to do so, right down to physically removing black people from his store if necessary.

To liberals, the issue of rights breaks the other way.

If you are interested in learning about the political philosophy of liberals, read this and its follow-up.

If you just want to be a mindless jerk who constantly refuses to look at what he's so busy insulting, just keep behaving as you always do.

>> ^gorillaman:

Right. Our actions are indicators of our character, but it's character that counts. Action doesn't exist in the moral dimension. If I want to pick your pocket, it doesn't matter whether I get around to doing it or not. If I'm a racist, it doesn't matter what I say; if I'm not a racist it doesn't matter what I say. It's all about what I am.

But "what you are" isn't knowable in any objective sense. It certainly isn't defined by your own opinion in the matter.

Back to the example of the pickpocket. What if he believes that property rights are a big fat lie perpetrated by people who just want an excuse to tell people what to do and how to act. He's not committing a crime, he's making a bold criticism of his society, and exposing how unreasonable people act over such a non-event as taking a few pieces of paper out of someone's pockets.

Is he a pickpocket? He doesn't think so. Does society think he's a pickpocket? Almost certainly. Is that the standard though? Objectively you can say he's broken laws and customs of the land he's in, and the word we use for that particular crime is "pickpocketing", and we've set up a system where we punish people for that particular infraction of social norms. It doesn't really establish what he is, but people will call him "a pickpocket" rather than "a person who picked someone's pocket".

Now technically, that's not really fair. An organized group of like-minded pickpockets could start trying to stigmatize calling people a pickpocket, since it's not really fair to conflate what a person's done with who they are. For that matter, a lot of pickpockets think the term "pickpocketing" is derogatory, and resent being called that. They think of themselves as defenders of property-blindness -- after all, only prejudiced propertarians can tell the difference between what's theirs and what's not...

This is the kind of arguments we hear all the time about race. Racism is clear cut, and easy to spot. Racism can happen unintentionally, just like stealing ("Oh, is that your pen?") and just like unintentional stealing, it becomes a much more grave offense if they don't own up to it or make amends for it ("Are you calling me a thief? I should sue you for libel you anti-theifite!"), and reflects even more negatively on the character of the offender.

So where do you stand on the whole carbon emissions and climate change thing? Are you one of these people who think scientists are engaged in a massive socialist conspiracy? Maybe just all completely wrong?

I don't know. We know global warming is real, but no one can accurately say it's man made. Over 95% of the carbon emissions are naturally made, the majority of emissions coming from volcanoes. These things were around long before the industrial age, and life on earth seems to have evolved just fine. We also know our earth has experienced global warming in the past, so this may be a cyclical event man has no influence over.

In the 70s "they" said we were facing an ice age. Did we? Remember acid rain? Another 70s scare that turned out to be a red herring for environmentalists. Good science always prevails, and there's probably a good reason why Al Gore is being sued for fraud.

I mean, read this, and tell me how you think we should deal with property rights when it comes to air pollution.

I can't speak for Conservatives, because I'm not one, but I can give you the Libertarian perspective: you solve it with lawsuits. If you pollute and it affects the health of others, then they have a right to sue for damages. There's no corporation limit to liability in a free market, and class actions would prove to be silly. People individually would sue the company and that would deter them from damaging the environment.

The alternative, which is what we have today, is the EPA fines them a one time penalty that is less than 1% of their gross revenue. That's the statist answer. Look at the Smithfield Foods fiasco for proof of this, and what's worse they then gave Smithfield Foods an award in environmentalism. And not a penny of the money they received from fining Smithfield was sent to the sick families to help with their health care.

Wow, Ron Paul is such a good soldier for the coal and oil companies.

So where do you stand on the whole carbon emissions and climate change thing? Are you one of these people who think scientists are engaged in a massive socialist conspiracy? Maybe just all completely wrong?

Or do you think there's some better way to deal with it than a market-driven solution like cap and trade?

I mean, read this, and tell me how you think we should deal with property rights when it comes to air pollution.

It seems to me that the conservative/libertarian goal is to keep air an unowned collective property that anyone can damage without repercussion. That's curiously dissonant from what you guys normally say about property issues.

In reply to this comment by blankfist:
So, you want to sign the petition or what?

First of all, let me say thank you for the reasoned arguments. As liberalsift's only "conservatarian" a heavy (voluntary) responsibility weigh on my shoulders. I'll attempt to address the talking points.


Native Americans practiced same-sex coupling. Thousands of years even before that, there's evidence of humans pairing off for mutual protection and cooperation - two prehistoric dudes have a better chance of taking down large game than if they worked alone. Two female cave girls have a better chance of surviving and avoiding being raped by cave dudes than if they were separate.

But what you're describing isn't marriage, and even if there were homosexual acts under these circumstances, it's not something the tribe would recognize. Even the ancient Greek pederasts scoffed at the idea of gay marriage.

Same-sex coupling has existed as long as humans have. Hell, even modern day penguins are known to engage in same-sex coupling.

We shouldn't be looking to the animal kingdom for comparisons, where cannibalism and killing other beasts' offspring is normal.

Before people cite the Book of Matthew, let me remind them that "Man shall not lay with another man..." doesn't refer to homosexuality. There wasn't even a word for it when the bible was authored. The line references how we are not to treat men the same way we treat women. And just how were women treated during the days of the bible's authoring? Like cattle - merely objects to be bought, sold, and bartered for. The line speaks that we should not enslave men the way we enslave women. The line speaks to institutionalized misogyny, and has NOTHING to do with homosexuality.

I have never heard this interpretation of Matthew so I remain...neutral.

The first amendment guarantees us freedom of religion. It also guarantees us freedom FROM religion. Every law needs a secular reason for existing. "God says it's wrong" isn't, nor will ever be, reason enough for a law. The 14th amendment guarantees equal rights and freedoms, even to people you don't like.

The First Amendment does NOT guarantee freedom "from" religion, this deliberate distortion is a 'gift' Progressivism. Equal rights and freedoms have very obvious limitations. You're free to ride a bicycle and you're free to drive a car on the freeway, but you're NOT free to ride your bicycle on the freeway.

The Judicial branch did it's job - protecting the people from themselves. Just because the majority voted for something doesn't mean jack shit. If it's unconstitutional, it won't fly, no matter how big the majority.

A judge made up things for a non-existent "right", similar to how abortion was made legal by non-existent privacy rights. Whether you agree with abortion or not, the ruling was inept and corrupt. There was a time when slavery was considered constitutional, so it's true that things change.

And why is it "Small-Government" types always try to use the government to enforce their religious views? Seems HYPOCRITICAL to me.

Some libertarians vouch for the "privatization of marriage" which means the State doesn't recognize any marriage but can only enforce contracts between (any) people. (Unfortunately?) we don't live in a libertarian society---far from it---and the State (with much thanks to Statists) has its tentacles in all manner of arenas and areas in which it has no business. The main reasons governments evolved was to preserve private property rights and keep enemies outside the gates. Marriage is a legal contract, and since it affects taxation and a slew of other things it is the State's business, for better or worse.

For me, the gay "marriage" debate ended with the arrival of civil unions. If a gay couple has the same legal rights as a married couple, then that is, in essence, the libertarian goal. As Elton John put it: "I don't want to be married. I'm very happy with a civil partnership. If gay people want to get married, or get together, they should have a civil partnership. The word 'marriage,' I think, puts a lot of people off. You get the same equal rights that we do when we have a civil partnership. Heterosexual people get married. We can have civil partnerships."

Obviously the 'loudest' gays are not happy with "civil unions", which brings me to my next point: there is indeed something special about the one man/one woman marriage. If there was not, these gay pawns (the latest pawns of Progressive Statist subversives) wouldn't be so adamant. Except for the fundamentalists, no one could care less about people's personal lives....but if you force a majority to recognize something as being on par with what they consider sacrosanct, then it will be received negatively.

I would be personally delighted if some judge ruled---against the will of the people---that all controlled substances drugs be made legal, prostitution be made legal, all excessive federal hurdles to owning firearms be abolished, perhaps the income tax be replaced with something else.......but it's not the way the system works. As a member of society I am as much a "victim" of traditional values as everyone else.

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Society is stupid. A large community of people in Germany decided killing Jews was ok (Godwin seekers you can now leave). It's a big reason we don't have a pure democracy: because people are STUPID. They're ignorant, they're fickle, they're quick to react to things they're afraid of and it is just plain stupid put somebody's rights to a vote, if that right isn't violating another person's rights.

Society is indeed stupid, but not all the time, and therefore the accumulated wisdom of centuries of trial and error shouldn't be readily abandoned.

----------------------------------------------------
Well, this is just one sifter's opinions. At present about 70% of Americans oppose same-sex marriage. Perhaps in 10 years only 30% will be opposed and society's values will radically change.

This is madness. What if you want to go fishing in the boat after? Won't you feel quite the fool having just left it lying around at that river one time.

Quote should end with: "But at least tie the boat up and apply reasonable property rights before leaving".

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:

I disagree that the government needs to "create a market for something". If it is one thing governments are very poor at doing is creating markets for things. People do this better and faster than government think tanks. I do however support new understandings in pollution in how it interacts with property rights. If you clog my air with filth, there has to be some legal ramification to that. It is due time to assess how property is defined in terms of air, water, and the like, I welcome that conversation.
(edited: Spelling, dear god man spelling)


I don't mean "create a market" meaning "we're going to use subsidies and taxes to make something that isn't economically viable on its own popular", I mean literally create a market as in "we're going to stop people from taking other people's stuff".

Read up more on the theory and practice of cap and trade. For real-world results, look at the sulfur cap-and-trade they implemented in the 70's to combat acid rain.

The basic idea is that we get an independent read on how much CO2 capacity there is in the environment, and then auction off tradeable permits for emissions. The market sets the price via supply and demand.

I am all for ending all subsidy of energy, oil, coal or otherwise! I would LOVE to see technology finally take government out of energy production. I would love for every house in America to be its own power generator. Could you imagine stopping off at someones house to "fill'er up"! That would be so cool to me! We still might want to keep "the grid" around, but it would fulfill a totally different function. I am hopeful that a combination of solar power + hydrogen fuel cells will give us this ability. Solar seems like such a cash crop of energy, and fuel cells give you the mobility aspect. Time will tell if this comes to be, but it seems pretty promising now with solar cells reaching 50% effectiveness!

I know of studies that talk about feedback loops for weather, and while intellectually intriguing ( I love all things dealing with Apocalypse!), it seems to be without any real historical evidence. Most mass extinction due to weather change that we have any real evidence of are due to catastrophic events such as massive volcanic activity or comets and meteors. While I don't doubt that human CO2 levels could do something that equates to those, I question if we produce the amounts necessary at this point in time. I have tried with little success to find ice and CO2 levels of the Mesozoic era. However, I have read somethings to the contrary of the capacity of the ocean to stabilize the temperature better than ice. Liquid water has a very high specific heat, by increasing the volume of water, you could have an even more effective heat dissipation system than that of reflective ice. I lack any real education into which one is more true. Interestingly enough, CO2 levels were most likely 10% higher than today during the Cretaceous period. There might be slightly more elasticity in the climate than most people have come to understand.

I disagree that the government needs to "create a market for something". If it is one thing governments are very poor at doing is creating markets for things. People do this better and faster than government think tanks. I do however support new understandings in pollution in how it interacts with property rights. If you clog my air with filth, there has to be some legal ramification to that. It is due time to assess how property is defined in terms of air, water, and the like, I welcome that conversation.

(edited: Spelling, dear god man spelling)

I have had some problems with establishing my own logical base for property rights myself. I think we are reading pages from the same book though

I have a certain problem with ownership defined simply by proximity to resources. For instance, I have problems with someone owning a mineral under the soil because they have a title to the land that says they own everything in and under it. This tilts the scales in favor of those who have capital to buy up huge tracks of land and hire others to dig it for them. IE, it is undercutting those who want to do work for those who have money. While this situation might be unavoidable, I am trying to come up with a more work ethic minded idea of land ownership instead of the model we currently have with has many of the same problems as intellectual property has developed. The basic idea I propose is that no person owns land outright, but only what they produce from it. That way, someone can't say they own gold in the ground and hire someone at some low rate to come get it for them. The person who wants to own that gold would have to work to get it because he doesn't have unilateral claim. He could hire others to help, but they would all have equal claim to all the gold. The result is the person who found it still gets more money than he would alone because many hands do more work more quickly, but the others also greatly benefit as they have ownership of that gold as well and have more bargaining power as a result. This puts power back in the hands of blue collars, which is where I think it should be. Anyway, I rant on.

I am not an anarchist however. Government has a very important role, and one of the most important is us all getting together as a group and decide how private property is going to work. There is no objective idea of private property, it is something we make up; as such democracy is really the best engine to tackle that problem. Other problems, like veto power over how you spend your time and money has no place in a free society. Defining what money and property, however, are essential.

First of all, I doubt the claim can be verified that taxes reduce consumption. I would challenge you to find any study that supports taxes have slowed smoking adoption among teens rather than increasing dissemination of health facts of smoking, or it just going out of style.

But that is a more technocratic argument. Why is the government singling out smokers, why not people who don't take an afternoon jog? Surly the government should encourage jogging with fines right? Jogging is healthy, not jogging is not, so why not tax not jogging? That is what it means to live in a free society, or in this case, not live in one.

Sin taxes are not taxes at all, but fines. Fines for expressing freedoms are immoral and reprehensible and have no place in a free society. That is why I raise the moral argument. To manipulate government imposed fines to enforce moral agendas is no better than any other form of tyranny of majority will. If that be the case, there is no defense against religious right coming to power and demanding a fine for people who don't pray, after all, that affects their spiritual health.

You assume that just because it relates to better health then it is ok for the government to get involved in, but health isn't the governments job, it's yours and mine. If I don't want to jog, and I want to smoke, you have no right to fine me. That is what it is, it isn't a tax, its a fine. Taxes are something we all pay for mutual benefit, like cops, roads, schools, ect. A tax on a substance to provide a dis-insensitive is legislating morality, and shouldn't be tolerated in any form. I don't argue against the objective however, just the means. I find smoking pretty gross, and would teach my kids to stay away from it as my parents taught me, but legislation is just wrong.

In America, we have ways of handling environmental damage through the courts. And I think there is something to be said about redefining laws to take into consideration property rights of air and water run off. Local communities that are affected by the consequences of local pollution are in a better place to demand reparations than arbitrary taxes that the local affections will never see. That is the real crime. These EPA taxes go to Washington and never come back to the communities they were extracted from, its highway robbery.

On the whole your arguments are completely flat, make no sense at all and simply serve to show that you have no real understanding of the subject. ( you see, name calling isn't very nice or constructive)

>> ^Entropy001:

This has to be the best coverage I've seen. I can't believe that I didn't hear anything on CNN about Transocean recommending a temporary halt in production.
I had thought they were actually responsible, as the media did report that the rig was their's.


Ya, it is an odd relationship for sure. BP owns the oil because of the leasing agreement with the USA. Transocean is in a bad position to argue because BP already OWNS the oil even before it is drilled. So, if Transocean causes to much headache, BP can just get someone else to drill. For all intents and purposes, BP is the boss because Transocean is just the labor portion of the equation. This situation points to some problems with the current state of mineral rights property rights. It is in about the same sate as intellectual property rights, you can have someone buy something with money, do nothing with it except exploit other people who want to do something about it. The current state of IP and MR in the US encourages people who have capital and do nothing over those who are people on the ground. And Obama shows no signs of reforming this discrepancy any time soon. Tighter regulations on oil drillers is almost part of the problem. What I mean is small time drillers who could potentially be more responsible because they are drilling where their families live do not have access to leasing rights due to larger oil companies being able to craft the regulation book in their favor; then just as easily dodge the regulations they just mandated.

You can see cases of this in the food industry as well. I recommend watching Food Inc. The FDA wanted to shut down this small time farming community that slaughtered their farm stock in the open air. The FDA claimed this wasn't sanitary. But ecological tests came back, their meat was many times more clean that meat form the major industrial meat factories. This really does seem to be the case of captured regulators, government corruption, and poor definitions of mineral rights. The problem of the oil rig exploding is just the Pandora's box if you will.