Topic: Libertarianism sucks. (Read 5100 times)

the ill gotten gains will leak out, I promise you. Only the strong survive.

It's true. Who is begging for the tax breaks?

yjacket, please write an essay on the source of "low interest rates," your views on property rights, and the "cost of capital" as sourced via theft.

Fixed.

Libertarians only exist today because there is the rest of the country around to support them.

Oh God yes. I'd point to the US after the civil war till the Spanish American War for one, though some would go all the way to WWI or the Great Depression as a prime example of a libertarian society out-competing others.

Much of early Rome's early history was considered libertarian in nature, though slavery was still common. In fact, Rome basically expanded not by conquest, but because whenever some city-state surrounding it had problems with tribes, they'd just call Rome to fulfill their part of the defensive alliance/pact called the Cassian Treaty. Rome continued to expand by more and more city-states and tribes signing pacts with it, till eventually it had control of all of Italy. It continued to expand from there as now entire territories wanted in on this huge nation that had immense power of force without any demands or regulations (just "user fees"). It was like the entirety of Europe was outsourcing security to Rome.

Others might point to mid evil Iceland as a libertarian society as there were essentially tribes run by Judges. In fact, the book of Judges in the Christian Bible also describes another form of libertarian jewish state, but the people always ended up clamoring for a king.

Hong Kong after WWII has been pretty libertarian, even up until recently they never had a minimum wage. For the previous nearly sixty years there was none. Sure, over time there's been tons of criminal activity there, but low comparative deaths, and it survived for so long as a safe haven for wealthy Chinese to escape communism.

These are just a few societies/instances off the top of my head.

OK I'll play, thanks for the invitation.   

Lets start with:

1) US 1773 - 1950   
2) China 1985 - 2010 

As examples of more libertarian enclaves that out competed their less libertarian groups.

You are a danger to yourself and others.

Throwing away capital by pouring it into a failing business makes things worse because all the resources tied up in that business are being pointlessly consumed instead of redirected into something successful.

And he lost me when he said this

"This is the lesson of Japan, where instead of allowing the liquidation of bad bets to take place they instead subsidized and transferred those losses to the taxpayer.  Suppression of interest rates was "successful" but over time the innovation that drove the Japanese economy has departed because good ideas were no longer able to outcompete bad ones. "

What? Low interest rates make it harder to compete? Really? Last time i checked having a lower cost of capital is good thing, and any failing business is at the very least spending money and employing someone.

This guy is a nut. Arguing for increased interest rates in the current environment is like asking to put out a fire with gasoline. No reputable economist would argue for it.

Ignore the inflammatory headline. The important part is the graph and its interpretation: http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=210976&findnew#new

Data is data, but the conclusions he draws are far from self evident. From my 15 minutes of listening to the guy, he seems to think he knows everyone and their motivations better than they do, which is simply ridiculous.

If the state did not exist, corporations would find it necessary to invent it.  The state would almost certainly be on a smaller scale (e.g. company towns), but that doesn't make it any less a state.

Denninger has some inconsistencies with regards to political philosophy but with regards to macroeconomic analysis he's very good.

Some people don't like him because he generates his graphs from verifiable sources, so it's possible for anyone to recreate the same spreadsheet he made the graph from to check his work.

It's hard for establishment apologists to call Denninger wrong when he uses the data published by the Federal Reserve on its own website to make his points so they typically resort to ad hominem attacks instead of addressing the data.

He does a good job deconstructing libertarianism with respect to globalization.

This just in, Denninger is a fucking blowhard. If you trust this guy for information then i have some options to sell you.

There is no way to argue against a no true scotsman fallacy. Define your parameters and argue from there. I'm not going to listen to a long diatribe from your particular prophet, i don't have the time.

If I were you, I would bring up example of more libertarian states that out-competed less libertarian states. That would allow for some discussion of the merits of libertarianism. 

For now, all I can see is a half-assed defense that can't come up with the theorized(by you) dominance of a libertarian society over more collectivist societies.

In general I am not in favor of arguments such as "my *ism is a great word and this other word, **ism, is total failure for everyone that tried it" because in the end these things come down to definitions, which are not agreed upon. 

On the other hand, sometimes the debates can lead to mention of specific issues of import, and so they are not entirely useless.  There is nice discussion on this weeks Keiser report on what is libertarianism really, if you're stuck in this thread I would recommend a trip over to maxkeiser.com to hear the 2nd half of Max's show. 

Has there been a single libertarian society that was able to prosper or out-compete another, non-libertarian society for an extended period?

To my understanding the answer is no, but I will leave that discussion to all of you.

The reason libertarianism sucks is because it promotes wealth/power over merit. There is a reason that we have public schools. We all pay for them and we reap their rewards when someone like Steve Jobs, and all of the awesome people from humble beginnings achieve great eminence, success, and glory. Without these requirements that everyone pay for the future of society only those who start from a position of power have a chance at success(for the most part). We, as a society, need to do all that we can to see that all the possible Einsteins actually become Einsteins. It is only through harvesting every ounce of our intellectual capability that we will succeed, prosper, and further the human race.

+1

Yeah, well put.  Fuck Monsanto.     

Rather sad with all the potential of modern science and genetic engineering, that with our fascist system we have held them down so low that the very best polymerase chain reactions have brought for us is "roundup ready" and "terminator" plants. 

Great!  Food plants that require extra industrial pollution and don't even give you seed back!  There's progress!

Clearly Americans thousands of years ago were much more skilled agricultural engineers.  I bet their success was in part due to embrace of the ideas of libertarianism.     

Hey, when you start dropping some truth, let us know.