>> ^gwiz665:

The people are trying to stand up to him, and he's committing outright genocide. Of course, we must do what we can to help the people liberate themselves. Unlike Iraq, this is not just for the hell of it - we are helping the people free themselves, when they do not have the strength themselves, as opposed to Egypt, Tunesia and so on.
If we sit and watch as the civilians are butchered, we are no better (or at least very little better) than the butchers ourselves.


I don't exactly prescribe to your exact moral position on this, but it does seem like a "better" version of Iraq as open rebellion has been happening in the whole region. The tricky problem is, how do you support rebels without directly supporting rebels (look at how well cruise missiles helped stop the fighting in Iraq), while also having to maintain diplomatic relations with the ruler if the rebellion fails, even more so if you are saying he is a war criminal? I can't bring myself to vote for this video though, this lady seemed like she was harboring some irrational hatred for anything US, even though I think it is France (lol?) leading the charge on this one.

Just a little moral question for ya. If you buy a CD player that you don't need, are you morally responsible for the homeless person you didn't give lunch money? Not trying to be snarky, I just find problems with believing in that exact moral position. It would result in a complete stimy of action because you actions could never be probably meshed with all outcomes of maximum happiness. Technocratic morality boredom, signing out!

Doctors have insurance because the technocrats of Obamhitler socialised Losercare!

(Sometimes I like to try and out-mad-name QM, completely out of context, just for fun.)

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)

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
End result of captured regulators and centralized planning you mean. I walk into my kitchen or my bathroom and I am FILLED with industries that never really strike me as evil or corrupt by your, what I would consider, hasty generalization of capitalism. I look at my CD-rs, my desk, my toilet paper, my bathmat. I get a good price at the exact quality I want of them. The big problems, the ones where we see the most corruption and unfairness are those industries usually associated with heavy government regulation or finite resources.
The more a government gets involved with the mode and means of production the more bad laws get passed to benefit few at the cost of everyone. Looking back, I think everyone would agree that the legal monopolies that exist on phone and cable TV held us back technologically and culturally. As a result of these controls people pay higher prices to these companies. As the government gets more involved the need for companies to both protect and influence government officials for their unfair advantage. The government monopolies on things aren't any better, like the postal system, but that is really a topic for a different conversation.
So the idea that you point out of "Unless you spend a great deal of constant effort on monitoring it, your government -will- be corrupted by the ultra-rich who can offer benefits far beyond those available from any other source." is absolutely correct. The solution then, isn't MORE government regulations and oversight on the private economy.
The solution in my opinion is my like a recent sci-fi concept my friend told me about for his film school project. The best cure for a villain, is another villain. The villain in this case would be businesses. Being that the most effective person to fight large power corruption is people after that same power. Given the same resources and lack of meaningful unfair advantages, over time they mill each other out to an even level. At certain times people might get a little less for their money when companies use their established reputation to sell one over on people (I'm looking at you Toyota), but the public out lash when this is brought to light is swifter than any type of technocratic bumbling you would get from non-industry people on capital hill.
Capitalism isn't pretty. The evils of capitalism are all to clear. Someone can risk it all, and loose it all. A man could work all his life an perhaps never get ahead. Such is the risk. But the truth of the matter is capitalism is a driving force for great wealth for a great deal man more people than any type of managed economy.
The real and hardest questions I think stem from intellectual and property rights limits and restraints as it is hard to find a purely rational limit on what those should be. But ultimately, the principles of libertarianism are based in reason and not emotion or personal value. When making a system, you have to bench notions of good and bad, those are personal values of which there are 7 billion flavors. You have to start with reasonable, or unreasonable...a completely opinion-free, logical arrangement or arguments free from notions of morality or religion.


unregulated capitalism is retarded.

The fact is the more money you have the easier it gets to make more money so the ritch get richer and the pore get poorer.

Because of the way capitalism works for the rich to get richer they esentualy have to grab the wealth from the less wealthy.Because its easier for rich to make money than for the pore to make money u end up with 2% of a population being super rich and the rest with pore to average wages.


If you want a democratic safe clean caring society you will need to regulate capitalism , Tax the super ritch and do projects that help educate the pore or those with less money , esentualy redistabute the welth.

alternatively you would have to fundamentally change capitalism which ultimately would be regulation again.

Pure capitalism could only ever work if everyone started from a blank slate and a equal footing and in reality that would never happen.

End result of captured regulators and centralized planning you mean. I walk into my kitchen or my bathroom and I am FILLED with industries that never really strike me as evil or corrupt by your, what I would consider, hasty generalization of capitalism. I look at my CD-rs, my desk, my toilet paper, my bathmat. I get a good price at the exact quality I want of them. The big problems, the ones where we see the most corruption and unfairness are those industries usually associated with heavy government regulation or finite resources.

The more a government gets involved with the mode and means of production the more bad laws get passed to benefit few at the cost of everyone. Looking back, I think everyone would agree that the legal monopolies that exist on phone and cable TV held us back technologically and culturally. As a result of these controls people pay higher prices to these companies. As the government gets more involved the need for companies to both protect and influence government officials for their unfair advantage. The government monopolies on things aren't any better, like the postal system, but that is really a topic for a different conversation.

So the idea that you point out of "Unless you spend a great deal of constant effort on monitoring it, your government -will- be corrupted by the ultra-rich who can offer benefits far beyond those available from any other source." is absolutely correct. The solution then, isn't MORE government regulations and oversight on the private economy.

The solution in my opinion is my like a recent sci-fi concept my friend told me about for his film school project. The best cure for a villain, is another villain. The villain in this case would be businesses. Being that the most effective person to fight large power corruption is people after that same power. Given the same resources and lack of meaningful unfair advantages, over time they mill each other out to an even level. At certain times people might get a little less for their money when companies use their established reputation to sell one over on people (I'm looking at you Toyota), but the public out lash when this is brought to light is swifter than any type of technocratic bumbling you would get from non-industry people on capital hill.

Capitalism isn't pretty. The evils of capitalism are all to clear. Someone can risk it all, and loose it all. A man could work all his life an perhaps never get ahead. Such is the risk. But the truth of the matter is capitalism is a driving force for great wealth for a great deal man more people than any type of managed economy.

The real and hardest questions I think stem from intellectual and property rights limits and restraints as it is hard to find a purely rational limit on what those should be. But ultimately, the principles of libertarianism are based in reason and not emotion or personal value. When making a system, you have to bench notions of good and bad, those are personal values of which there are 7 billion flavors. You have to start with reasonable, or unreasonable...a completely opinion-free, logical arrangement or arguments free from notions of morality or religion.

>> ^kronosposeidon:
I wish we had more people like these. we could create a whole new paradigm for human interaction. I would radically change our senseless consumerism into pursuit of higher standing. Maybe we could start giving back all the shit that we don't need to whoever wants it, free of charge
We have powerful enemies, and they have powerful enemies. If we could create a battle for the powerbrokers to go at it neck and neck, it won't make any difference who wins. We will fill in the gaps with our resources and skills, once the battle is over. We'll fix things the way they've always needing fixing, with no one to stand in our way.
I know it sounds crazy, but the Founding Fathers of this land all drank prodigiously while debating and writing out the Constitution, so it's happened before.
There's some crazy shit brewing in the country right now. Almost nothing would surprise me with the various outcomes being played out in the streets, the courts, the corporate boardrooms, reclusive militias, and a government dead set on keeping it all together. Interesting time to be an American


I only go to work unshaven and high on mushrooms. On lunch I skateboard with several other like-minded corporate sillies and generally act like I own the place.

"Do you work here or are we gonna have to deport you to Santa Ana?"
"Sir, I have a badge and it says STFU."

It's a grand time to be a technocratic hooligan. I'm in love and out of control and everyone who thought I was some hopeless crazy summbitch are wide-eyed silly poops-on-sticks. Oh man, oh man, oh man, OH LORD IT WORKS!!! You know? You don't gotta fit the status quo to fit in and go down and around -- fear when I settle down and raise a family, because FUCK YOU's our slogan, but it's a slogan of love. Since when has "FUCK YOU" been a slogan of love? I know, it's really weird. Honk if you love Cthulhu.

Dee dee dah dee dah

So, are you a demonic technocrat? Those damn Ixians still haven't delivered my no-ship.


Many congrats!

>> ^filantropo:
amateur digital video for the masses.
take that, authorities without knowledge of the present-day technocratic-free-for-all society. Huuunnn (humping gesture)


choggie.

amateur digital video for the masses.

take that, authorities without knowledge of the present-day technocratic-free-for-all society. Huuunnn (humping gesture)

"A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

It has always seemed to me that guns and gun regulation have been a nature of state regulation and not national regulation. A sawed off shotgun might not have any uses in new york city, but out in the woods is a whole different story.

The amendments were always about restoring the power to the people, the fact that guns are in there is just one other way the founders were protecting our liberties from government oppression. Being that no real problems with the understanding of this amendment happened till all the founder fathers were dead and buried is a real shame because now we are left in the hands of technocrats and people pushing their own pet agendas.

>> ^MaxWilder:
Hopefully one day enough people will grow up and take responsibility for themselves, and we'll be able to take a more libertarian approach to government. But that day is not here yet.

My hope is that one day we realize that money isn't everything, shut down the banks, and convert to a Resource based economy in a technocratic society, so that everyone can live as well as everyone else and we'll actually have leaders that are qualified, not just ones who tell us they are.

re: ehm... science?

I'm not concerned with whether it's true or not, I'm just saying that relying on it as "knowledge about human nature" might conceivably influence the lawmaking process (we don't need the people to vote on this law because it's been scientifically proven to be sound), and that would be a technocratic tendency.
I hope i didn't come off as a hater of science or research into human nature earlier (some of the replies seemed to think so); I'm not, i just see the democratic state as a bit more fragile and precarious than others perhaps do.

I'm with Churchill on this one: "it has been said that democracy is the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried"

Have you ever considered that plutocratic, kleptocratic, oligarchic, oiligarchic, fascist, technocratic "money" is a social construction to restrict the people's inherent right to 21st century medicine, information techology, and other fruits of...our natural socialist utopia?

Short answer: no.

Expanded answer: People in free societies nor anyone else have a natural "right" to take goods and services created by others without fair, agreed-upon terms of compensation. Karl Marx thought that profits were invented by greedy capitalists and therefore unnecessary to run a viable economic system. He was wrong.

Succinctly: There is no free lunch.

Fast forward 100 years. Nanotech and robotics will likely make virtually every product, good and service affordable worldwide...free peoples working in free markets will be the fastest path to that goal, not nanny-state governments, theocracies or monarchies.

^QM, you mention "money." Have you ever considered that plutocratic, kleptocratic, oligarchic, oiligarchic, fascist, technocratic "money" is a social construction to restrict the people's inherent right to 21st century medicine, information techology, and other fruits of the free market our natural socialist utopia?

We are seeing more world unity and cohesion through the emergence of global business then actual policy, as we grow closer economically between nations large conflicts are reduced as the nations with the most military might do not want to engage with nations with which they are economically tied.

But at the same time it leads to a situation where the American government cannot press China into relaxing its state controls on the populace and giving more democracy. However the silver lining is that as China grows more economically prosperous we will have a technocratic middle class emerge that will be more involved in the government and business enviroment, however this kind of change is glacial.

The world government idea is becoming more and more possible with the advances in technology, specifically in terms of communication connectivity and information gathering which would allow for tailor suited policy adjustments in different areas. I personally believe that national specialization would be beneficial for the world, if country A is good at producing cars, and country B is good for making computers there is trade and reliance between both nations, leading to increased cooperation.