Political Litmus Test
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I don't want to punish support of political candidates. I want to punish support of criminal activities. Just because the criminals in question happen to be of a specific political party does not make it a valid political philosophy to commit crime.
What crimes has your crazy SJW head imagined this time?
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Questioning whether your country is right or wrong IS supporting it.
What a lot of people don't know about the "My country, right or wrong" is the next sentence, "when wrong, to be put right". Which is similar to what you are saying.
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Yeah, I didn't want to shit up the thread by bringing that up here but it's already a shitstorm anyway.
I really don't understand what a leftist libertarian is. I mean, "the left" means "we'll take your stuff and redistribute it as we see fit while wrapping it in pretty words about justice and equality". That seems like the polar opposite to freedom to me even in theory, and in reality it always turns out even worse in practice with corporations receiving welfare. Either I'm missing something, or there are a lot of people who understand the word "freedom" in a very strange way.
It's because you associate money with freedom. In many ways you are correct, but a "leftist libertarian" would disagree that the statement is universally true. To a leftist libertarian, paying an extra 5% of their income to fund programs that provide food, clothing, shelter, and education/training to people in need does not meaningfully restrict their right to free speech, their right not to be spied on by the government, or their right to marry whomever they wish.
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So are the decommissioning costs associated with obsolete reactors.
Here in the real world, everything has associated costs. How much does it cost to pull down an abandoned windmill?
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I watched it on fucking video you dumbass.
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How the hell does "do you think abstract art is art" reflect on one's political compass?
Most likely, agreement pulls you somewhat leftwards and maybe downwards.
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Assault, battery, libel, harassment, sedition...
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I specifically avoided saying money. It's not about money, it's about means. It doesn't matter if the means are represented by bank notes or live cows.
But anyway, the point is that if I understand libertarianism correctly, the point isn't "Am I willing to give something away to help someone away?", but "Am I going to force others to give something away?". You can be a libertarian and happily contribute a half of everything you make to charity, but you can't be a libertarian if you're forcing others to do that. (And by forcing I mean actually forcing, as in with violence or threat of violence, not by not talking to them if they don't.)
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Rejecting authoritarianism is apparently fascist.
So you're taking the enemy of my enemy thing a step farther and assuming that anyone who disapproves of a particular authoritarian cannot be authoritarian himself? And Hitler and Stalin were golfing buddies arguing over a mulligan?
But threatening violence against a peaceful gathering of people for a political purpose in order to silence them...that's not fascist as long as it's against a @Fox approved target?
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So yeah, either Greens are waaaayyyy more libertarian than Ron Fucking Paul, or the test makes no goddamned sense.
This version of the test is quite flawed.
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I watched it on fucking video you dumbass.
Well there's your problem. I don't consider those videos to be a reliable source of news.
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You have gone on and fucking on with your authoritarian bullshit.
I don't know why you feel telling people they can't say stuff that makes him feel bad is authoritarian.
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I'm unfamiliar with Greens
I'd find the idea that you're unfamiliar with the Green Party laughable, except we haven't heard much of them since Obama was elected.
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Oh but Donald "I only know what's on the Internet" Trump is your greatest hope for America?
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Oh but Donald "I only know what's on the Internet" Trump is your greatest hope for America?
I don't even like Trump, so I don't know what you're going on about...
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:citation_needed:
https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/4a2bu9/what_really_happened_at_the_chicago_rally_my/
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UK. I know what the Green Party in the US is and stands for, for the most part, but that could be entirely different in the UK.
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@Fox said:
Oh but Donald "I only know what's on the Internet" Trump is your greatest hope for America?
I don't even like Trump, so I don't know what you're going on about...
Remember that enemy of my enemy thing? @Fox has morphed it into: If you don't think my enemy is the most evil enemy then you're my enemy and you're totes evil.
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A post on reddit is not enough to disprove the dozens of videos i've seen of Trump's supporters becoming belligerent and violent at his "peaceful" rallies.
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I watched it on fucking video you dumbass.
Was it on MTV News Decoded? If so, I have news for you, that woman is one of the most racist people I have seen.
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A trillion of filthy brown people are gathering at the glorious gates of Europe and want to rape our houses and set our women on fire. I watched it on a fucking video you dumbass.
Bilderberg group under the orders of Jews and lizard men from the dark planet Nibiru are planning to mark us all with tracking chips and take away our guns. I watched it on a fucking video you dumbass.
Anita Sarkeesian is an expert on videogames. I watched it on a fucking video you dumbass.
Et cetera, ad nauseam.
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Google a video of a Donald Trump rally at least two minutes in length. Pick one yourself, and I bet ypu five dollars it will be a citation for one or more of those crimes.
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When you say "work" do you mean "work" or "work at a paid job"?
For many people, those two things mean roughly the same thing.
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Google a video of a Donald Trump rally at least two minutes in length. Pick one yourself, and I bet ypu five dollars it will be a citation for one or more of those crimes.
I don't think @Polygeekery wants your charity.
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No, it was on YouTube. And Last Week Tonight. And CNN.... MSNBC... Facebook... I have yet to see a video of a Donald Trump rally that didn't involve some sort of behavior which disgusted me to the point of nausea.
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A post on reddit is not enough to disprove the dozens of videos i've seen of Trump's supporters becoming belligerent and violent at his "peaceful" rallies.
You seem to think I'm disagreeing that some Trump supporters have acted violently. This is because you don't really read what's on the screen if it doesn't fit your narrative. But if I used your logic, then those Trump people would be absolved for opposing the fascism of the anti-Trumpers.
BTW, Cruz has had people try to attack him at an event, too.
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Google a video of a Donald Trump rally at least two minutes in length. Pick one yourself, and I bet ypu five dollars it will be a citation for one or more of those crimes.
Once again, expecting others to do your work for you and once again failing to provide evidence for your assertions.
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Hmm, my results:
Surprised I didn't get closer to the libertarian edge. Maybe some inclination for a moderate level of regulation kept me there. Not surprised to fall in the center between left and right.
As for the questions in the test, some made it difficult to tell how it would grade you due to lack of nuance. For instance, I had these two questions side by side:
"A genuine free market requires restrictions on the ability of predator multinationals to create monopolies."
"The freer the market, the freer the people."
Let's ignore the needless "predator" language there. I believe monopolies are bad, so regulation and restrictions to prevent them are necessary for competition and a genuinely free market. Someone might disagree though, believing that less regulation makes it freer, even at the cost of monopolies.
So, who's interpretation of what a genuine free market is used in the second question? Will the test check that I believe a free market is one without monopolies, and freer means more competition, or assume I believe freer market means less regulation?
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Honestly, @fox, how exactly does your screeching about how all Trump supporters are violent racists because you saw a video on Youtube and CNN and MSNBC differ from all those people who are screeching about how Europe is under siege by mozlems because they saw a video on Youtube and ČT24 and Nova and Facebook?
Is it different because you're the good guy? Because you mean well? Because you're not racist?
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I find it very amusing that @Fox talks about all the videos that supposedly shows what a scum Donald Duck is, but doesn't post any links.
(pre-emptive edit that should have been done tomorrow evening)
It's even more funny now since he still hasn't posted anything!
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I specifically avoided saying money. It's not about money, it's about means. It doesn't matter if the means are represented by bank notes or live cows.
You can replace "money" with "wealth" or "property" in my post if you'd like. I certainly wasn't trying to restrict the argument to cash.
But anyway, the point is that if I understand libertarianism correctly, the point isn't "Am I willing to give something away to help someone away?", but "Am I going to force others to give something away?". You can be a libertarian and happily contribute a half of everything you make to charity, but you can't be a libertarian if you're forcing others to do that. (And by forcing I mean actually forcing, as in with violence or threat of violence, not by not talking to them if they don't.)
This is still limiting the definition of libertarian to be about your money/wealth/property. As I said before, to a leftist libertarian, there's more to freedom than being wealthy. If a black person has a few million dollars in their bank account, but it's illegal for them to go to certain stores and restaurants because they're black (and the government tracks their movements to ensure that they don't violate the law), then that person doesn't have much freedom, despite their wealth.
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Yeah, the problem with the monopoly question is that I think monopolies only exist in a free market as long as people are willing to put up with them.
Take banking: In a free market, it's entirely possible that one bank buys all others and ends up with a monopoly. As long as this monopoly is beneficial to its customers (by driving down costs and/or offering a good service), it continues to exist. When people become dissatisfied with the big bank's service, any random person can just start their own bank and offer service that's better.
In a regulated market, any random person can't start their own bank, because of "consumer protection" and shit. Anyone who tries ends up with massive fines and/or jailtime, because what if they turned out to be bad? Meanwhile, the big bank can just grease some legislator pockets and continue to enjoy its state-enforced monopoly, for safety. And when it finally implodes it'll just get bailed out with more money taken from its dissatisfied forced customers.
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Okay, let's start by punishing support of illegal immigration.
Mexico, for example, will have standing to complain about US attempts to stop illegal immigration the day after it tears down the wall it built on its southern border.
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Sigh. God fucking dammit this thread could have been interesting.
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Indeed. There are at least two types of freedom: political and economic. Lacking freedom of either kind can severely restrict your life and options.
Which is why I'm willing to pay taxes for food stamps, for example. Because food is a basic necessity of life, and lacking it has huge welfare/utility consequences for all of society.
@blek: Take banking: In a free market, it's entirely possible that one bank buys all others and ends up with a monopoly. As long as this monopoly is beneficial to its customers (by driving down costs and/or offering a good service), it continues to exist. When people become dissatisfied with the big bank's service, any random person can just start their own bank and offer service that's better.
LOL!
Hint: monopolies don't drive down prices. They raise prices and create barriers to entry. The "free" market is highly restricted by the behavior of the monopoly.
The market is so "free" that it is not even considered a "free market" by economists. You have taken the economic freedom competitive markets provide and handed it over to the monopoly.
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I think it's hard to come up with a one-size-fits-all policy for monopolies. The way I see it, sometimes they're beneficial, sometimes they're harmful.
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Well, no, you can also dedicate 50% of your time to the needy. Or anything else. The point still only is that a libertarian wouldn't force anyone else to do that, while a leftist would.
With the "certain race not allowed" thing - it's about preserving everyone's freedom as much as possible. You can't make sure that everyone gets to shop everywhere without trampling on someone's freedom. A libertarian, the way I understand it, wouldn't force a homophobic bakery owner to bake a cake for a gay wedding, and the same libertarian would also not force a gay bakery owner to bake a cake for Westboro Baptist Church's fundraiser.
The way I understand it, it's about protecting negatively defined rights (e.g. nobody can prevent you from obtaining healthcare if you find someone willing to provide it to you), but not positively defined rights (someone is forced to provide healthcare to you). Because you can't always enforce the latter without taking away someone's freedom.
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Hint: monopolies don't drive down prices. They raise prices and create barriers to entry. The "free" market is highly restricted by the behavior of the monopoly.
No, governments create barriers to entry, exactly like I said. In my country, if you want to start a bank, you need just above 41 million dollars (1 billion CZK). Nobody has that kind of cash.
And yes, monopolies can drive down prices: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standard_Oil - It might be rare, sure, but the point is that in a free market, if the monopoly doesn't satisfy you, you can do something about it. The more regulated the market is, the more difficult that is to do - so you're depending on your glorious leaders to fix your problems, and I think we can all see how that works.
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UK. I know what the Green Party in the US is and stands for, for the most part, but that could be entirely different in the UK.
Based on the quick skim of their website, approximately the same as the American one, i.e., captured by Communists.
Yes, actual Reds, even though they've taken pains in recent years to hide that, by, for example, scrubbing links to International A.N.S.W.E.R. from their website.
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No, governments create barriers to entry, exactly like I said.
You're mental.
Governments might create barriers to entry, but that does not negate the fact that monopolies create barriers to entry to protect their monopolies. High barriers to entry are exactly why monopoly markets are not competitive.
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Well, no, you can also dedicate 50% of your time to the needy. Or anything else. The point still only is that a libertarian wouldn't force anyone else to do that, while a leftist would.
With the "certain race not allowed" thing - it's about preserving everyone's freedom as much as possible. You can't make sure that everyone gets to shop everywhere without trampling on someone's freedom. A libertarian, the way I understand it, wouldn't force a homophobic bakery owner to bake a cake for a gay wedding, and the same libertarian would also not force a gay bakery owner to bake a cake for Westboro Baptist Church's fundraiser.
The way I understand it, it's about protecting negatively defined rights (e.g. nobody can prevent you from obtaining healthcare if you find someone willing to provide it to you), but not positively defined rights (someone is forced to provide healthcare to you). Because you can't always enforce the latter without taking away someone's freedom.
Agreed. The libertarian view allows people to be charitable with both time and money for causes they believe in. I'm charitable when I can be, for things I deem worthy. Forced charity diverts those resources towards places I have no control over, for causes I may strongly disagree with, with distributors and managers I know nothing about, and makes it much more difficult for me to participate, reducing my freedom in this area.
E.g., I've been known to help friends in need with educational expenses and I'm fine doing that. What I'm not okay with is people proposing massive tax hikes on my salary to provide free education for people I don't even know when I haven't even paid off my own schooling yet...
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I have yet to see a video of a Donald Trump rally that didn't involve some sort of behavior which disgusted me to the point of nausea.
That might just be because you're a hothouse flower, though.
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How does a big bad bank with a monopoly prevent someone from just starting a tiny bank-like service for their friends and neighbors without government intervention?
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You're mental.
Governments might create barriers to entry, but that does not negate the fact that monopolies create barriers to entry to protect their monopolies. High barriers to entry are exactly why monopoly markets are not competitive.
Who enforces those barriers, if not the government?
I'm sure those monks in Louisiana who just wanted to sell artisanal caskets would be interested in your answer.
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By, for example, closing off the credit card and payment and money transfer network (which they own, by the way, since they're a monopoly). By closing off the financial intermediation network (which they own, by the way, since they're a monopoly).
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Who enforces those barriers, if not the government?
Here's some basic economics for you:
Barriers_to_entry
Barriers to entry Barriers to entry are any circumstance that makes it less likely for a firm to enter a market. Some barriers are deliberately created by the behaviour of existing firms (the market incumbents). For example, an incumbent might deliberately restrict entry in the short run by...
All the monopoly has to do is make entering the market unprofitable. There are lots of ways to do that, and rent-seeking is not the only one.
