Well, originally, I wanted to hear more from NitneLiun and Rear Admiral. Over on the secret service thread, they had interesting, intelligent things to say about the deficit and money supply. Tatty Patty and others have also said things on different threads that have piqued my interest. Whether or not any of these people self-identify as libertarians is beside the point - I thought the responses generated would be interesting in and of themselves.

If I'd known FBF was going to start pissing and moaning about Fox News and Rush Limbaugh (I don't listen or watch either) and it would start to overwhelm the thread...I probably would have thought twice about starting it.

Sorry to harp on the Reason site, but I don't think you'll find anything crazy or loony there. Even the stuff I don't agree with (undocumented workers actually stimulate the economy, socialized medicine is just awful) is presented in a non-alarmist way. I like the core concept of people being left the fuck alone. I totally get why it's an ideology people can't embrace; i just wish they'd stop making stuff up about it(no, I'm not an expert, but man i heard a lot of bullshit prior to investigating myself)>
Any idea that freaks out both sides of the political spectrum so much must be doing something right.

I wasn't really looking for or expecting an answer. Just ignore me, like everyone else does, until I want your attention. Don't worry you'll know when that is.

Up on a pedestal over the Great Unwashed? Check.

Can see the things the sheeple can't? Check.

Lame 1984 reference with no quote? Check.

Unable to answer the simplest of questions. Check.

Looks like a libtard. Sounds like a libtard. Must be a libtard.

I let my subscription lapse a few months ago, but from what I remember, they weren't that alarmist about socialized medicine - in fact, Welch wrote a pretty good editorial praising France's system, which is a good blend of private and public. As a former resident of Canada, I wouldn't say I'm against socialized medicine, so much as against having the option of pursuing a private option taken away from me. I've used private systems in a couple of different countries, and it is the complete opposite of the picture that leftards in Canada like to paint. Most countries in the world, even the USA, have some form of socialized medicine like Canada, but unlike every other countries in the world, Canada (at least until a few years ago) didn't allow any private option to be exercised.

The French are bigger pinks than Canadians could every hope to be, and they don't have a problem with privately owned and operated roads or hospitals, so why the fuck is it such a threat to the Canadian way of life if private hospitals were allowed to operate alongside the public ones? IMHO, it's paternalistic bullshit, and just as cruel as allowing someone to suffer because they don't have private insurance.

Every fudges the truth a bit when it comes to "socialized medicine". I know i can cross the bridge and pay for an MRI (Quebec has its own code). I really had no problem with the two-tier system Tony Clement was pushing for a few years back.
Reason did a vid piece of a woman in Canada, complete with sad music in the background that I thought was a tad misleading.

Is it me or are you getting milder with age?

You just keep telling yourself that, Van Der Sloot.

The democratic party isn't a leftwing party. It's part of the same cleptocratic shit heap controlled by the lobbyists and iron triangles.

It's because there where no points or valid questions made. I'd get more stimulating conversation with a half rotted grape fruit........I did fine the image where you make it appear I'm sitting in a coffee house while stroking my pencil thin hipster mustache sipping a glutton free chi soy frappuccino, posting from an ipad tethered from an iphone and casting judgment at all the squares pretty funny.

http://www.amazon.com/Wake-Up-Youre-Liberal-America/dp/1932360220

I know Michael Moore is a giant fat fucking douche bag, rich bastard hypocrite asshole........that being said......

It really makes no difference because the rightwing have won, will continue to win until the husk of america is sucked completely dry. There is no hope or escape.

It uses a lot of theatrical tricks to invoke emotion from the watcher, but it makes some pretty good points none the less.

1. I watched the whole clip. Joseph Goebbels himself couldn't have done it better. Pure propaganda for 'Free Marketism'.
2. It (conveniently?) forgets to mention illegal invasions and occupations of sovereign states, which is one of the main factors wrecking the US system.

It does have some good points, I'll admit that.

No, there were only two points of propaganda.

1. There was no purposeful deceit on the change from a new ice age to global warming theories. Real science has made them change their lies over time.

It will be interesting to see how CERN's latest studies on solar cloud formation makes them further refine the lies, once it has been slowly disseminated through out the scientific community.

2. The Gibson Guitar raid wasn't about environmentalism. It was part of Obamas crackdown on conservative owned businesses.

The so called illegal invasions/occupations have nothing to do with a free market economy. Those are just talking points socialists use to distract from the fact that there has never been an economic system that has raised so many people out of poverty or that has created and maintained a such a large middle class. Look what China has done with just a few free market reforms and yet they are still a mostly totalitarian government system.

I'm not going to discuss any environmental issues with you. Done that in the past, it got nowhere and, frankly, I don't care enough about it.

I didn't claim that the illegal invasions/occupations have something to do with free marketism. Don't muddle the arguments.

I don't need to distract from the 'fact' about raising people from poverty or maintaining a middle-class society. If you consider China's reforms to be free market reforms, you obviously do not have a clue. There is not the tiniest bit of the free market as described in a/m clip in China.

Besides, at what costs (in the broadest sense) did your free market raise poverty and maintain a middle-class?

Of course you aren't going to discuss environmental issues, you realized you can't, a long time ago, and you were the one who brought up militarism and implied a causation. If you don't want to be called out for your obvious distractions, then don't seek to distract.

China removed many regulations that allowed open competition (inside it's own borders) in key economic regions. Most notably electronics manufacturing. That has lead to an increase of overall wealth for the country and an ever increasing middle class. Sure they are still controlled by large, corrupt, progressive government, but those things always go hand in hand with progressive governments.

The costs of the free market were mainly environmental, which you refuse to discuss, but were quite well addressed with the rise of the conservation movement in the mid 1960's. The other has been labor. The toll on workers was atrocious which lead to rise of labor unions which made significant grounds in improving workers conditions.

Unfortunately both the environmental and labor movement have been co-opted by leftists, in order to put a stranglehold on the free market and bring to heel all industry under government control.

hahahaha you're using CHINA as your shining example of neo freemarketism success? fucking a CHINA???? who have created a huge economy for a tiny few elite "gold class" built on the back of workers treated like absolute shit and frequently fucked over and not even paid....yeah man right on. I could totally get super fucking rich by making people work at gun point for microscopic or no wages at all, you are beyond fucking stupid.

I hate arguing politics on the net but...the labour movement has been co-opted by leftists? The labour movement has always been a movement of the left. Also strange to credit capitalism with the rise of unions, that's like crediting the Gestapo for the French resistance.

Unions have always been socialist in nature sure, but it never had the aspirations for the amount of political power that it does now. The industrial revolution was the driver of worker conditions that lead to the rise of the unions, in this country. Free market conditions contributed greatly, life was cheap, and employers could expend it with pretty much impunity.

China has raised more people out of poverty with their free market reforms over the last 20 years than the $15 trillion the US has spent on the entire great society. The US hasn't even lowered the poverty rate, in fact it has increased over the last decade.

The richest city in this country is now Washington D. C. They are the "gold elitists" FBF is banging on about. The more power they get the bigger they get the richer they get. While everyone and everywhere else are getting poorer.

The single most damaging thing the liberals have done to America is to have their fucking teachers' unions destroy our public elementary and secondary school systems. Want to know what is driving the higher-edumacation bubble? Too many goddamn people in college, most of whom have no business being there, seeking credentials to replace a good secondary education. A high-school diploma used to mean something, but once the "education professionals" took over, America's schools turned to utter shit.

That kids are having to borrow money to replace the education -- a very well-funded education, mind you -- that the teachers' unions refuse to give them is an utter travesty.

An ever increasing middle class? Yeah, from no middle class in 1980 via 1% middle class in 1990 and 3% middle class in 2000 to 5% middle class in 2010. Indeed, ever increasing.




By your standards, I'm probably living in a semi-communist country surrounded by fellow socialists and other assorted left-wingers. Strangely enough, corruption is almost non-existent in Northern Europe. So much for your perceived correlation between progressive government (whatever that is) and corruption.




You live in a comfortably small world, don't you? Improving working conditions in the US, yes, but exporting the collective butt-rape of the working class to developing countries.




If you say so, oh Grand Source of Knowledge!

Here's a great article for all of you goofs. Arguing about politics is like arguing about wrestling. Theatrics and all that.


http://whatever.scalzi.com/2002/03/22/i-hate-your-politics/

5% of China's population is greater than 67 million people. And that's just with a few free market reforms. The population of Holland is 16 million, just for some size relevance.

Do please tell me just how many people socialism has raised out of poverty. That's right, I forgot, socialism impoverishes people and doesn't even attempt to bring them out of it.

i wrote a big funny response to FBF's refusal to answer 2 simple, valid questions. As his ilk does. When I tried rto post, it kept hanging up. Too lazy to rewrite it. The fact remains he can't and won't answer two valid questions.

"Socialism" is just a word to laugh at. All the Socialists didn't just go home after the Soviet Union came down. Failure just means you change your handle and pretend that the previous handle never really existed. I seldom use the terms Communist or Socialist because all it does is give them wiggle room to deny there's any such thing as a Communist. So they can call themselves whatever they want, the ideas, and more importantly the consequences of the ideas, are still the same.

Please present one shred of empirical data to back up your ignorant horse shit. I admit %99 of what I saw is ad hominem strawman attacks designed just to rile up rightwing shitheads, and I find if hysterical when the supposed "Intelligent" responses are nothing more than more strawman non-responses, slogans and dogma.

hahahahahaha, speaking of fucking STRAWMAN horseshit. I just LOVE this line of thinking about how ruthless dictatorshits filth like stalin is always used to point to the flaws of a socialized market. (they'll never bring up the messes we caused like the shaw of iran over throw or how about fucking papa doc...we sure love to suck the cock of any old genocidal monster as long as they say they hate the commies) but without degenerating the debate into that road I'll just say this.........your argument seems to point to the same old tired analogy of how "the child like left winger likes to say the pie is finite where in THE REAL WORLD capitalism just makes a bigger pie for every one!!!!!".......All the same time ignoring the inherent REAL WORLD problems of capitalism like externalities, chronism, massive abuse and manipulation of the legal system, crushing small business using lawyers (very un american and anti free market if you ask me) and on and on, which you could find mountains of evidence researched and written by people a billion times smarter than any of us..... you say monsters like Stalin rise as a direct result of socialistic ideal...I say the capitalist system is just as apt to create the same monsters.........once again, people like you who watched some john stossell specials and think they know what the fuck is going on in the world.

And you watch what again for your world view? I'm pretty sure the last Stossell thing I watched was when Dave Schultz bitch slapping him for axing if wrestling was real.

Didn't say anything about childlike Leftist ideology. Don't have the foggiest where you came up with that. But amazingly enough, you managed not to answer the questions. Again. Or have2cit's. For the first time. So I'll call you on that so you obfuscate around it again. Maybe you could tell us more about the "Shaw of Iran". Tommy Shaw? Clay Shaw? The Shawofiranshank Redemption? What does it say about your grasp on realpolitik that you seem to think the Pahlavi Dynasty was born in Ireland?

The fact is, Socialism, Communism, Communiry Organizing, whatever you want to call it, has been a failure every single place it's been tried. Sometimes that failure is benign. Less than adequate health care. High taxes. Sometimes the consequences are a bit more intense. But 5 people dead is a tragedy. 20 million is a statistic, no? But starving to death watching your crops be sent west isn't as romantic as a Che tshirt or listening to the Nightwatchman.

The questions still stand, but the answers don't start with "America did...". I'll be happy to discuss the foibles and excesses of capitalism. But that's not the subject at hand.

The questions still stand. Do try to answer them.

All you need to know as far as capitalism vs communism goes is that Italy built the Ferrari. The U.S.S.R. built pieces of shit that were inferiorally designed even compared to Panzer's enema cannon blueprints.

PJ O'Rourke talked about Eastern Bloc buildings made from a mixture of concrete and straw.

Not even remotely the same thing. You missed the part where I called Stalin a murdering monster and want to accuse me of Obfuscation? You sound like someone who would have worked for Cointelpro in the 60's. Minimum wage is about $17 an hour in Norway because they have strong unions and even white trash piece of shit dishwashers don't have to live in trailer parks.



fast forward to around 2 minutes where he talks about how The US didn't give a fuck less about how many people stalin killed, it was only the example they where setting or the rest of the world of how fast they could develop under their system that we saw as a threat, ideologically, Stop trying to paint the picture of our government giving a flying fuck less about 20 million dead ruskies.

Economics 101 is over kid. Your grade is T (for tard) minus.

i get the feeling he's not going to be allowed to repeat the class. just a guess?.

Where did your computer that you're posting on come from? Where did your car come from? Liberia? Cuba?

Typical leftist arguing. Stalin was bad, but we did bad stuff too. That excuses it. We didn't do anything about Stalin, which somehow makes us culpable in his crimes. What could have been done, ace? Anything that could have been effective in stopping or slowing his crimes would be fodder for you today to whine about how bad we are.

History has proven you wrong.

I'm sure the government would loan him the money to retake the class infinitely, but maybe it would better if he switched majors to minority studies or french literature, to fit in better with his OWS buddies.

You sure you want to go with Italy as your example of capitalism in action? The corruption there is through the fucking roof.

I can see where he is going with that one. I'd rather have lived in Italy than East Germany, Poland, Yugoslavia, Romania, the USSR, or anywhere else controlled by communists during the Cold War. Regardless of how corrupt the country is/was, it still has/had more to offer than the best that communists can offer.

Why the fuck do you keep insinuating that I'm trying to "excuse" anything stalin or any dictatorship has done? Why do you keep trying to equate absolute communism with European style socialism? You know creating a gigantic mostly capitalistic economy without letting the ultra rich power structure run completely amok? There has never and never will ever been this mythical "freemarket" that you are idolizing because the massive wealth consolidation will always close it's iron fist around everything to control the laws and circumstance of the populis.........You're trying to point out microsoft as the ideal corporation? A company which basically has acted more like a facist state or mafia to get where it is. it' sure as fuck wasn't by providing good products....You basically get socialist protection for the ultra rich and capitalism for everyone else.....you wouldn't have airlines trains or the internet without government funded programs....and to answer your previous question
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d'%C3%A9tat

I don't think anyone here was saying how great Communist Russia or the Eastern Block was back-in-the-day. Italy actually had one of the biggest and most legitimate Communist parties in Europe. Most Western democracies are based on ideas of social democracy rather than pure socialism or capitalism, which doesn't really fit into the either/or arguments so popular with many Libertarians.

Most of the cars from Ferrari were total shit during the years of the USSR. Sure they were fast and handled nicely, but they were just as shitty in terms of overall build quality and reliability. So in reality, your argument is that socialism produces cheap pieces of shit, and capitalism produces expensive pieces of shit.

You make a good point. The only thing I would add is that the social democracies have/had more market freedom and that is one of the factors that make them more desirable to live in than an Eastern Block country back-in-the-day.

That's still two more selling points than what the Panzer family tree was turning out at the time. You also forget that those old Italian sports cars were the sharpest looking things going at the time while Soviet automobiles looked like cardboard boxes with wheels.

It's fucking hysterical how some of you point to recent "capitalist" expansions in China. As if that makes up for any of the atrocities that China has ever performed. And suggesting I support the Chinese government in the first place...you assholes can't have it both ways, is china good or bad or what? Fucking morons. A country who's government completely erased tank man from history literally threw it down a memory hole. Seems to show how little you understand what I'm trying to convey in the slightest. Ideals that have been expressed by people with far superior brain power than my own. But it's all been ignored and systematically suppressed by the clyptocratic super organism.

I was watching a documentary about Kindelberger and it talked about how he got all the privately owned aviation companies to come together in a form of corporate socialism during world war 2 to focus all their intellectual property and raw materials production into the war effort. Socialism beat the nazis.

And what's widely considered the most well made assault rifle ever created. Just go ahead and ignore my post.

Private schools are the answer, Free market magic at work