There are many libertarians out there. Oh, who are we kidding? No there aren’t. And also, many of the few that are, are No True Libertarians. But, as a Romanian saying goes, we work with the customer’s situation.
Among the libertarians, there are many categories. Minarchinst, an-cap, bleeding heart, degenerate and much more. They differ on as many issues as they agree upon, although they have sufficient thing in common to believe a world in which the political arguments would be ones between different flavors of libertarian would be a better one indeed.
But I am not going to talk about this division, but a different one. What is the source and the foundation of the libertarianism? My general thought on the matter for the majority of my glib life was as follows. For the foundation I see the main categories as deontological (true) vs utilitarian (meh). For the source I see it a bit between rational and instinctive, as a way to express it.
Now to be perfectly clear: I am not saying some are more rational than others in life, in general or in any way. Just as the source of their libertarianism. To phrase it a certain way, you either knew deep down before putting into words, or put into words before knowing deep down.
I see instinctive (or is it instinctual?) libertarians as ones for which liberty seem right and self-evident and have never needed to rationalize it, naturally attracted to libertarianism if you will. I see rational libertarian as ones who reached the philosophy after a longer process of thought analyzing politics, history, and economy as they see it.
I would expect the former to be more prevalent in countries with a longer tradition of liberty. I generally see myself in the latter classification. I came to libertarianism not necessarily organically, but through reading massive amounts of things and thinking about them. Though it may be strange in my case, I am a deontological libertarian, and I assume a good number who came to libertarianism by learning economics, for example, to be of a somewhat more utilitarian bent.
More recently, I think there are few purely in one category or other, but a fusion of the two with one dominant. I would expect most people have some basic deontological values. I would expect most deontological libertarianism to have at least a sliver of utilitarianism in them. I expect that you cannot rationally reach full libertarianism if you don’t have, even deep down, a strain of instinct and a basic value of liberty. And I think many instinctive libertarians, at least occasionally, engage in some rational fact base analysis.
Finally there most likely is a difference to be made between more and less “dogmatic” libertarians. They both want liberty, but getting there can be more or less flexible. There are off course problems with both. Rigid adherence to some very strict principles may not fully work in the real world to promote liberty widely enough, but excess flexibility may make the principles worthless. Another way of putting it is compromise vs no compromise libertarians. This off course assuming compromise was possible which it is not, certainly not with the left. But if it were, let’s say, some libertarians would favor it some would still not.
Off course being too flexible can turn you into the Nick Gillespie of libertarians. In the end, you do you, it is a not-that-free-country-but-whatever.
Does it matter? Not necessarily. For deontological liberty lovers, it can be that outcomes in the future and history in the past is not that relevant, if one sees liberty as an end, not a mean. If liberty is the purpose, whether socialism works (it goddam doesn’t) is not really relevant – except in debate with utilitarian socialists (bunch of morons if you ask me). Although it helps to keep in mind the history, most would not support liberty any less had communists not committed genocide.
Utilitarians may be more focused on the history, on the outcomes and they may be more rational than instinctive. Although, any libertarian worth his salt, even utilitarians, need to keep in mind that means do not always justify ends and that means matter.
Although on some level this can cause a bit of conflict. I can see a deontological libertarian mistrusting utilitarians, in that if the utilitarian starts believing liberty is not the best for “utility” than they will abandon it. If liberty is an end in itself, than seeing it as a mean to an end is dubious. Off course one can see a hybrid when the end goal is maximizing liberty and one can have a utilitarian view of that. Although this has many traps, because many things that may temporarily seem to favor liberty do not in the long run.
Overall I would say that, for a majority, both means and ends matter, a liberty can be seen as a bit of both. Good in itself, but also leading to other good things.
Similarly, there may be more mistrust between the mostly instinctive, who need no justification for liberty and see rationalizing it similar to all that utility talk. On the other hand, people used to rationalize things may mistrust people who go mostly on instinct. While it is hard to be rational without some instinctual part due to basic human nature limiting pure rationality, I am not convinced of going purely by gut. People do need to occasionally analyze their biases and take a critical look at their views. Everyone has biases. I suffer from more self doubt than many I feel, but I think everyone should examine their premise and their bias. Most people don’t.
While I feel many libertarians get this, one note I would make is that many “normies” to appropriate the word do not. This can influence how one spreads the good word with the normies, who are mostly utilitarian in nature. And this is something the instinctive deontological libertarians mat not be good at. This leads in general to the opinion that is not even worth trying, which may be true in itself. But it may be worth a shot once in a while, just in case. It is hard with normies. They don’t get it instinctively, but if you try some pure “logic” that won’t work either. You will not convince people with zero utilitarian arguments, but neither will you with zero moral arguments, some principle arguments give your views strength. And working on principle, ethics, basics, can be more convincing that raw data.  Someone without at least a few principles can be dangerous. Principles to anchor us, to have impose some limits and restrictions, like this will not do no matter the utility. The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas and all that jazz.
This is again one of those thinking out loud posts which I am not perfectly happy with but decided to submit anyway. While I am not sure I am as convinced of the categories I presented, I think this can be a start to a discussion or two. So… the comments are open. Comment away. And yes, I am telling you what to do.
No Comment.
I think you know why.
Is this the precursor to a
handicapAuthor fight?It’s contrarianism.
Because fuck you, that’s why? :-p
See the first vignette for an explanation of my philosophy.
https://www.glibertarians.com/2019/02/qs-brain-toilet/
/shameless self-promotion
Pictures are worth a thousand words.
“Although on some level this can cause a bit of conflict. I can see a deontological libertarian mistrusting utilitarians, in that if the utilitarian starts believing liberty is not the best for “utility” than they will abandon it.”
Tyler Cowen, call your office. Glenn Reynolds, call your office.
“While I feel many libertarians get this, one note I would make is that many “normies” to appropriate the word do not. This can influence how one spreads the good word with the normies, who are mostly utilitarian in nature.”
Normies stay in the middle of the Overton Window, and the Overton Window is not moved by staying in the middle of it, its moved by dragging it in the direction you want it to go. The commies called for a government run healthcare system decades ago, and they continue to call for it today. Every single step we take toward one they denigrate as “not enough, do more.” That’s why they win. Because they drag the window toward their preferred policy. Their loud and incessant calls for a UK style system allow their political allies to pose as reasonable moderates by “combining the free market and the government” with all the various healthcare programs and policies and taxes and regulations.
Glenn Reynolds definitely has not covered himself with glory during the current WuFlu panic.
Wasn’t Neal Boortz a libertarian at one time? There’s someone who went off the deep end.
He still was at the point he retired IIRC. His crtieria for whether or not somethng should be legal was “have you by force or fraud taken or damaged someone’s life, liberty, or property.”
That’s what I thought. He sounds unhinged these days.
Their loud and incessant calls for a UK style system – that is not a particularly performant one
They don’t know or don’t care. To them, the NHS has no flaws. Everyone gets all the medical care they want, its just as good as American healthcare, and its 100% free/paid for by TAXES ON THE RICH. The NHS is an article of faith to American leftists. They think waiting lists and rationed care are just rightwing lies.
Everyone gets all the medical care they want – i my moms cousin hurt her knee in January and got surgery in August
Then again I have a friend in England who never really uses medical care, but knows the NHS is one of the best systems in the world.
That’s just an isolated incident that shows that it just needs more funding. They also never wonder why the vast majority of innovation in treatment and drugs is happening here in the US.
They want the UK system because it is not a healthcare delivery system, it is a public health system. As we have seen during the current unpleasantness (and as was made clear, for those with eyes to see, during the ObamaCare debate), they want a public health system because it is an open door to micro-managing every aspect of people’s lives.
A public health system is not tasked with delivering good health care as an end in itself, and so it does not. It is tasked with moving various population health/collective metrics in desired directions. To the extent good health care does that, fine. To the extent it does not, well, the public health system will not deliver good health care.
We all know that most health problems are rooted in lifestyle problems. Thus, a public health system will focus on changing your lifestyle, not delivering good care. Changing your lifestyle requires a Total State that has the authority to dictate or at least influence every aspect of your life. If you don’t eat a “healthy” diet according to the public health system, then efforts will be made (taxes, rationing, subsidies, whatever) to get you to change your diet.
Public health is the key to the kingdom of total control. That’s why the current unpleasantness is playing out the way it is. The lockdown supporters are public health people who want to control you. That’s why the goalposts keep moving.
The total state is the goal. Changing your lifestyle is just the fig leaf to cover up the true intention. They’re too giddy when people they don’t like die or commit suicide or get aborted to plausibly claim to care about your health.
The fact that anybody can change their lifestyle on their own, and many do, is utterly irrelevant because it does not advance the goal of control.
The only real question is, why? What does control give them, except more misery?
Authority is in and of itself addictive.
We all know that most health problems are rooted in lifestyle problems. Thus, a public health system will focus on changing your lifestyle, not delivering good care.
HOLY SHIT THIS
It’s the only ethical way.
Every time I see the name Glenn Reynolds, I immediately conflate Glenn Howerton with his character Dennis Reynolds.
I have been writing an actual sincere post for some time quasi-related to this subject.
Utilitarianism can never work, because none of the things that it presupposes actually exist.
My “libertarianism” is a mush of several disjoint ideas, and the reasons I’m ok with that will be explained in that post when it finally gets finished.
-Harm reduction. Power will always be abused. Systems will always benefit those most twho take advantage of them for their own benefit.
-Humility. I don’t know how to run your life. I rather doubt you kow how to run mine.
-Courtesy. I mind my own business. I would appreciate it if others would do the same.
-Freedom. At some point the Boy Scouts inculcated in me that to be an American was to have Freedom as your prime value. They were good propagandists at the correct time in my devlopment, and it stuck.
-Anti-abstractionism. The universe is concrete. Reality is concrete. Ideas, values and the like only exist to the extent that sentient entities exist. Tying this back into harm reduction and inserting the quote from Lewis, all of the great horrors of the past occurred when people believed in “something greater than themselves.” It used to be fashionable to blame all wars on religion, but that’s just a special case of valuing the abstract over the concrete.
I’m in a similar space but have never pursued a solid definition of myself.
I’m impressed by others who have studied this space, but I haven’t, so I don’t know what the words mean. But I think I’d be bored to actually read up on the argot of libertarianism.
I just want to be free, and my natural inclination is to project that as a standard onto others.
And I know I’m extreme: do fuck off in every regard. If your even nicest, tamest, best-intentioned preferences that would make the world perfect in an instant but require a police state and bureaucracy to implement, we are enemies; that perfection foregone is a tiny price to me compared to the invasion that can be deployed given the technology we have and the gestapo wannabes at every corner.
I’m ready to read that as soon as it’s posted.
Very on point saying.
I was in a compromise with myself and didn’t realize it. As a pure socialist (Army guy) I didn’t understand the nuances of liberty/freedom but I didn’t want freeloaders. Somewhere along the line I began to see that I was the freeloader, I kept thinking I had chosen the right path but few of the things I was doing were necessary but I never questioned the morality, only my personal future security.
My second VN vacation was a turning point in that I looked around and saw that the war was not going well and our goals/actions were very fuzzy. We persisted though, to the detriment of a lot of young men and women.
The draft became a recognition that forced servitude was immoral but I was still lost in the wilderness.
Reading Robert Ringer and Milton Friedman, 40 years ago was a recognition that there others that were out of step and I slowly dove in.
apropos
https://twitter.com/SteveStuWill/status/1253085652633223174
Using pedantry for good. Or at least good entertainment.
https://xkcd.com/2297/
So a “classification of libertarians” is like a “murder of crows” or an “unkindness of ravens”?
No, I think it would be more like a “Disagreement of Libertarians”.
Dang you!
I disagree.
An argument of libertarians?
In case you weren’t aware, you’ve got a BBQ vending machine in your town.
I want a BBQ vending machine. They should put a joint vending machine next to it.
That is awesome. Especially Ms. Jones’s comment!
She’s got a thing going on?
a discord of libertarians would be my go to
Bob would probably disagree.
Not a scrotum of libertarians?
A Clusterfuck of Libertarians.
If we are being honest.
Someone (within the group) once dubbed the collective of Black Rock Ranger as a fucktardium.
A deep dish of libertarians.
Very good Article pie. If you don’t mind me adding my 2 cents:
I think the Rational and Utilitarian divide is also a bit of a continuation of the rationalist vs positivist/empiricist argument in philosophy. Utilitarian arguments, i think, are useful to convince people to be open to liberty, and get people started, but that the rational arguments give them the foundation to actually withstand situations that are more difficult. If you’re principles you adhere to aren’t formed only on a utilitarian foundation, then it’s like the man who builds his house upon the sand. We see this in every crisis, where some libertarian voice is lost because they were focused more on the utility rather than good reasons for liberty.
If you’re principles you adhere to aren’t formed only on a utilitarian foundation, then it’s like the man who builds his house upon the sand. – I think this sentence needs rework for me…
I do make appeals to principle often, but when someone has a completely different paradigm, you need to convince them off it and you need to do this with some arguments, not just stating your paradigm.
The issue with many people they only think what they like not what is possible. They cannot fathom something they want is not achievable. I think this is where a bit of reason comes in if you can get any to listen.
Reasoning will never make a Man correct an ill Opinion, which by Reasoning he never acquired – as Johnnie Swift would say… A conundrum
If you’re principles you adhere to aren’t formed only on a utilitarian foundation, then it’s like the man who builds his house upon the sand. – I think this sentence needs rework for me…
Woops. Yeah i messed that up. Changed the structure mid sentence. If you only have utilitarian foundations, then when a crisis happens, you are more likely to give up your principles. But like you said, i agree. I think utilitarian arguments have their benefit in that they are useful in convincing people to give ideas a chance. It helps make people to be more receptive. And then they learn the more “rational” reasons for libertarianism.
I thought you meant it like a collective noun. A classification of libertarians. A taxonomy of libertarians. Or maybe simply a difference of libertarians.
There is the One True Libertarian (and there can only be one). All others are false and/or dead.
A falsity of libertarians. A contradiction of libertarians.
Thanks Pie.
I’ve said it many times, I became a libertarian to meet chicks!
You were misinformed
And they like you
Yes they do.
Its gonna be tough, Tundra, supply is limited and the demand is bigggly.
Judging by my dating life, even pre-Wuhan, this is not the case.
You were dating a lot of libertarian women?
No – the demand being “biggly”. That’s hogwash.
How you doin’?
*waggles eyebrows seductively*
In all seriousness, I continue to refine my libertarianism. For instance, I no longer believe that any size State is tenable. The very nature of the State is wrong and anti-liberty. I thanks many of you for starting me down that path.
That said, when I’m attempting to persuade someone, that particular stance I keep to myself for awhile. It is really a struggle to win people over to the side of liberty. Starting with what many (most?) people would find absurd is a sure way of stopping them from pondering any of your other ideas. You have to find the places where people’s defenses aren’t so strong and work from there.
I said it the other day, no matter how good the mousetrap is, you still have to market the hell out of it.
Everyone’s on the side of liberty for the stuff they want to do. It’s extending that liberty to others for things you don’t think they should be doing that’s tough.
first we rip out all the traffic signals!
yeah: I don’t start there either; the answer, of course, is: sell muh roads, but I won’t live long enough for that
I very well might live long enough to go to prison for having had the wrong thing in my blood when I walked past a USG Orwellogauge™ installation and SkyNet realizes I’ve enjoyed some second-hand ganja or I was pregnant two months ago but now I’m suddenly not.
Starting with what many (most?) people would find absurd is a sure way of stopping them from pondering any of your other ideas.
Very true, though i’ve known a few people who have “wacky” ideas and being able to share some with them actually helped them to see me as more open to ideas and not just an NPC of right/left.
I’m by no means a good evangelist for libertarianism. I think the best way is trying to live by your principles, and if people ask why you do some things, you can explain why. I also think giving slightly unexpected opinions makes people more curious. So if i’m talking with someone who thinks i’m a right winger, and they are left, hitting on points of agreement that they don’t expect helps them to see where we might be different than normal “right wingers”.
A big problem for libertarians is that they forget/don’t realize how everyone else sees them. Typical left wingers will think you are just a radical right wing extremist. And Conservatives think you are just leftists in sheep’s clothing. We forget that and so aren’t even ready to start talking to someone who has these assumptions already.
Typical left wingers will think you are just a radical right wing extremist. And Conservatives think you are just leftists in sheep’s clothing.
I’ve had both.
Long ago, when I was working a table for the local Libertarian Party group at a festival, a guy approached me. He said he was a Socialist. He looked at the sign and literature at the table, and said, “Libertarians. You’re right wing and you don’t even know it.”
I didn’t touch marijuana until I was in my mid-twenties. Before that, whenever Republicans found out I was a libertarian and opposed the drug war, they’d say, “You just do it because you want to smoke pot.” They didn’t know how to respond when I told them I didn’t touch the stuff.
Picking up a topic from the previous thread, would the pandemic reaction be sane if Obama were POTUS.
I’m going to say NO.
My reasoning for this has to do with state finances, or lack thereof. IL, CA, NJ, and others want a federal bailout. The virus shutdown would be Obama’s perfect excuse to ram one through. The financially responsible states would be up in arms about such bailouts. Instead of picking on Trump, the MSM would just decide on another GOP bogeyman (with even less power) on which to focus their 48 Minutes Hate every hour. They would absolutely inflate the number of pandemic deaths and blame it on lack of bailouts.
just put a few true free-market Republicans in charge of this and it will all be fixed in no time !
Yup. This is why I’m seriously considering de-registering to vote. No side is pro-liberty.
just put a few true free-market Texas Republicans in charge of this and it will all be fixed in no time !
Not a challenge, but in your opinion how should Tim Dunn respond to the current oil issues? Sincere interest, not a provocation.
Oh, I’m mostly just being silly and beating on Texans for being lukewarm; it’s my favorite sport. * shoots in the air, re-holsters, spits *
My preference is for free markets and tiny governments; under such a philosophy, Dunn’s opinion would be moot. Further, his job would be harder, but it would be clear to him that it’s his problem: it is the business he has chosen. Then the market would decide what his commodity is worth, and he’d assess his risks, and yada yada yada.
Any other governmental path is wrought with moral hazard.
The MSM would do its level best to make the reaction appear sane and ordered. Things would play out more or less as they have, and Obama would have done more or less what Trump has done, but it would be lauded as visionary statesmanship and courageous leadership. Chloroquine and remdesivir would be hopeful treatments undergoing scientific testing and thoughtful vetting instead of being snake oil foisted upon an unwilling bureaucracy and uninformed public. The protests would still be vilified of course, but Obama would be heralded as a smart man who leads from behind for letting the states direct things, while Trump is an idiot and buffoon who had to be saved by the noble and enlightened Governor-Emperors. So on and so forth.
My response:
Without the panic, the economic impact would be much reduced, IMO. Maybe still some kind of slowdown/recession, and maybe enough of one for Obama to hang another “stimulus” bailout to the states (which is all the original stimulus was).
I’m a utilitarian libertarian not in the strict sense of the Utilitarian philosophy but in the sense that I believe that the government that governs least governs best. Liberty works best for us hairless apes. If communism or socialism did work in the sense of creating the good society I would be a communist or socialist. I veer off into deontological arguments mostly because I don’t know if a certain policy would be utilitarian or not and nobody knows regardless if they claim they know. Mostly I think that government law, policies, etc. should be part of a discovery process and really like Heinlein’s idea of a 2/3 rule to implement a law and 1/3 rule to get rid of a legislation.
BOOOO
I don’t know if a certain policy would be utilitarian i this is strange. how do you define utilitarian in that you cannot measure it?
It’s the calculation problem.
Even if I were I strict Philosophical Utilitarian I would need to figure out what action would create the greatest good for the greatest number.
The problem is that every action has results that one cannot determine in a chaotic system (Sorry RC Dean).
In a sort of large numbers way I can look back at history and see that free societies function better than less free societies. But for smaller policies it is much harder to see what is beneficial or not.
Ok. Two questions.
How do you define good.
What percentage of people as sacrifice would you accept if it maximises the good of others.
How are the people to be sacrificed chosen?
And what manner? I mean it’s one thing to be heartless and another to drag them up the pyramid and rip their heart out.
The organs would be ridistributed to the people in need
I’m defining good as that which allows humans as a whole to have the things they need to flourish.
Yes the socialist would claim the same thing but the way they go about it doesn’t work. Libertarianism and liberty in general does.
“What percentage of people as sacrifice would you accept if it maximizes the good of others?”
I don’t know. How many people are currently living in nursing homes? 🙂
More seriously. I’m not looking to maximize the good of some but the good of all. Or close enough in a satisfactory sort of way. I’m not arguing for Mill’s strict Utilitarianism.
I’m defining good as that which allows humans as a whole to have the things they need to flourish. – how very vague of you. Also keep in mind tastes differ.
What percentage of people as sacrifice would you accept if it maximises the good of others.
–
I’d kill you all to benefit myself. That’s why people shouldn’t have power, because of people like me.
Hey hey hey UCS is the evil one here
Look, if I don’t keep sacrificing children, the rains won’t come, and if I don’t keep ripping hearts out, the sun won’t rise. I’m doing this for the good of all ya’ll.
I mean… The risks seem pretty bad. Best to follow the precautionary principle and not stop him / Taleeb.
How do you define good.
It all comes down to this. Utilitarians fall in one of two camps: amoral or deontologists who haven’t scratched the surface deep enough to expose their principles.
I’m neither deontological or utilitarian, I’m an assholeitarian.
I became libertarian before I knew what it was while in the Marine Corps.
I hated people having so much control over my life, even though I volunteered.
I have no desire to control others and have read enough on theory and economics that I believe it is the best system.
I have since come to the conclusion that the Constitution is a failed experiment to see if the government can be kept in check with a piece of paper.
I like the way it started, but feel it started to go “off course” 🙂
do elaborate
You were drunk when you started it, liked where it was going later when you were sober the next day but couldn’t find that train if thought again.
So you drank some more to get back into the mindset but still couldn’t get back there. I don’t know about you, but I do that all the time.
don’t worry: it’s good
if you take the straightest path acrost a field, you’ll step in a lot of problems
My discussion with normies, when there seems to be an impasse, is the “Without production there can be no consumption”.
Electricity does magical stuff but it doesn’t magically appear. Now where’s that last roll of TP?
We bought a big bag of charmin, not because we needed it, but because we thought someone else might. We texted all our friends and family and they are good. I guess the TP panic is over.
I was logged out, so I logged in and landed at the dashboard, when I came to this post, I was logged out again, but the Appearance is back to normal,
/insert Twilite Zone intro here……
“degenerate”
That’s a global property of the libertarian class, Pie. Just FYI.
For me, I think my years long study of theology and ethics and political philosophies came together as a congruence of the golden rule and you leave me the fuck alone and I’ll leave you the fuck alone. Not that those tendencies weren’t there from the start.
I consider the golden rule to be my guiding deontological principle. The rest is just math – utilitarian.
Growing up redneck, pro-confederacy, I was ingrained with a hatred for the FedGov. As an adult I lost the racism, but kept the government hate.
Speaking of the good old NH of S this is a tweet by K.N replying to another tweet about how everyone knows how good the NHS is
-“The NHS has lower survival rates for cancer, strokes, heart attacks, respiratory diseases and other conditions than most first-world health systems. It also has longer waiting times and less freedom of choice.”
https://twitter.com/K_Niemietz/status/1253307436225761280
Now, going beyond how ridiculous it is that you cannot even you know, question the NHS like have a discussion maybe it is not the best etc. Something caught my eye in the replies
“Attacking the NHS in Britain is akin to attacking the Constitution and the Founding Fathers in America. Blasphemy. An attack on the established civil religion.” – this is wrong on so many levels it makes me wonder if this person thinks at all. Never mind the fact that the constitution and founding fathers are constantly attacked without causing the vapors which the mildest NHS criticism causes in England, but you cannot compare in anyway a constitution with a healthcare system.
From what I’ve heard from Brits, it’s national programs like the NHS or the National Trust which more and more are the only beds of mortar holding Britain together. The wars were long ago, borders are racist, the conceit of an Englishman is racist, there are no liberties which aren’t susceptible to jackbooted South Yorkshire PD, the lefty consensus is that the country needs to be swallowed whole by the EU and the EU swallowed whole by Islamists, and the right-wing, such as it is, constantly vies for leftist approval.
It’s not wrong. It’s perhaps more telling than intended, though. The NHS definitely has more reverence in the UK today than the Church of England and certainly more than the Constitution and Founding Fathers do in the U.S.
Picking up a topic from the previous thread, would the pandemic reaction be sane if Obama were POTUS.
There would have been no pandemic if Obama were
Presidentour Benevolent Lord and Master. Merely a blip in the flu numbers.You’re being sarcastic, but I can almost guarantee you that there would have been no shutdown and the virus would have been treated no differently than what H1N1 or any of the other recent pandemics were, if Obama was still POTUS.
This is all 99% TDS, we must get rid of bad orange man no matter what the cost. If we have to burn it all down, so be it.
It’s like Russian Roulette being played by the media and the left. Either all we deploarables and bad orange man get it between the eyes, or they get it, or we both somehow get it. Any of which is far better than bad orange man getting another term.
California skate park filled with sand to enforce social distancing backfires as dirt bikers show up
Never underestimate human ingenuity.
Awesome!
“While I feel many libertarians get this, one note I would make is that many “normies” to appropriate the word do not.”
Every time I hear statements like this, I think back to when the term libertarian was cool. People would say ‘I was libertarian before libertarian was cool’. We were perpetually having a ‘libertarian moment’. Of course, both of those things were in general, fallacies.
I recall one of the bandwagon libertarians back in those heydays, saying to me ‘I’m a libertarian’. A few minutes later…
Me: ‘We should eliminate property taxes’.
New Libertarian: ‘But what about roads and bridges and skoolz!!!’.
Me: Umm, OK, I see.
let’s not get into the whole land tax debate just yet 🙂
Everyone is allowed 1 deviation.
Allowed?
That post wasn’t actually about getting into the whole land tax thing. I think we lost the context somewhere out there…
Man I’m all against the man keeping you down. But like… We can’t get rid of the roads and bridges and skoolz! Thats the good stuff the man does!
Roads and bridges are a public good paid for with taxes on gasoline, new vehicles, and registration fees. In effect they’re (supposedly) paid for locally by people that use them.
Public schools are a structured daycare at best, at worst a prison.
Next question?
“Public schools are a structured daycare at best, at worst a prison.”
Indoctrination centers, payed for by all of we taxpayers, to turn children in little Marxists and eventually into adult children dependent upon the state, so we taxpayers.
Its like a carousel. Ride the pony. Circular. Up and down.
…all good things,
Roads and (especially) bridges are somewhat rivalrous and absolutely excludable. As such, not public goods.
So you’re saying I need to buy a Wangler with one of those spare wheel covers that say roads are an example of needless government spending?
Not the worst thing to buy when gas costs less than tacos.
https://courses.lumenlearning.com/boundless-economics/chapter/public-goods/
Roads and bridges are like “public” schools, parks, buildings, etc. Nominally for “everyone” (where everyone is defined as a particular limited subset of the population) but in reality are just another toy for ofifcials as Chris Christie can tell you. The restrictions on who can enter the George Washington Bridge are less than those who can enter the Washington Monument, but it’s a matter of degree, not kind.
Also, I want tacos.
You know, I haven’t had actual tacos in a long time.
And I don’t have the requisite ingredients to make any.
The one time I’ve been to Empire Plaza I noticed a complete lack of lorchas.
It’s like that every time I’m there.
Sad, really.
Property taxes violate private property rights. Public roads are (supposed to be) funded by gas taxes. I have no duty to, nor should I be compelled to fund the education of children that are not mine.
First of all, they pay people to have more kids. Then they make us all pay for more kids. Then they complain that there are too many people, so they make us all pay for abortions when people change their mind about wanting kids. If they can just extend abortions to up to 18 years, it’s all perfect.
If you disagree with any of that, you want people to die!
Wanting people to die =/= being comfortable with illiteracy.
Get back on the plantation!
Tow the lion.
The drug may or may not have some efficacy on Covid19. But one thing is for sure, TDS is fatal in all cases.
Not that the writing wasn’t already on the wall, but the whole hydroxychloroquine is good/evil just exposes the rot of much of our “scientific” establishment. I’m not talking about scientists per se, but the way “science” is communicated and championed by science proponents. Everything that can be linked to politics will be. This is iconoclaism vs the Iconophiles of our era. Do you worship at the cult of “popular science”.
Related is the “We will open up when science! tells us to open up. Which translates to “We are giving the epedimologists full reign and considering nothing else”. Tom Woods had a good podcast on this yesterday. Something that has not been talked about often enough is that always heeding “experts” makes sense only if you believe the experts also have your interest in mind. The epedimiologists do not care about Joe shmo loosing his job. So saying you are going to follow him is not really rational.
It also requires that you be an expert at picking experts.
Even for the case of “oh, they’re the acclaimed/proclaimed experts” you have to know (or accept) that that’s the valid method for picking experts.
+1 Jordan Peterson
“many of Peterson’s fans, who are drawn to his macho image ”
What? Macho? The guy’s an intellectual who just happens to be on the wrong* side of most intellectual debates. Never would ever think of him as macho.
*-according to the other intellectuals.
1 Jordan Peterson
Yep. And in this case, there are no experts, because we’ve never done this before. Everybody is just making it up as they go along.
Just like life, the universe and everything. (With no intended pointer to Douglas Adams)
Tow the lion.
I’d rather toe the loin.
broke protocol by meeting with President Donald Trump
Elected officials can’t have meetings that are presumably relevant to their capacity as representatives of their constituents? Dems intend to rule with an iron fist.
Some lions get awfully cranky depending on where and how hard you toe them.
My rights are not subject to a business case analysis. So fuck any utilitarian arguments for or against liberty.
I was told that 99% of Americans don’t agree, so there !
But why do you want to kill grandma?
My grandmothers are already passed. I don’t care about yours. {is that cruel enough to be a true libertarian}
The orphans are delivering your monocle.
Not caring is barely enough; you would do better to suggest their immediate transformation into Soylent Green (considering the number of shares of Soylent Corp you own).
That’s between me and her.
There are absolutely zero statists who care about your grandma.
Why? Because there’s a big ol cookie jar full of money to get their paws in and gradma is depleting it. Never mind it’s there for gradma, we wants it! It’s ours! /statists
My grandmother started having breathing problems over the weekend, so we bricked up her bedroom while we source hazmat suits.
Wasteful! You should have used the official CCP method, nail or weld her door shut. Stop wasting bricks, comrade, before we have to send you to the camps to stomp some more mud into brick making mix, without the straw!
straw? I thought we upgraded those camps. Or is this one of the green camps where they’re artisinal sun-dried bricks?
You’re being sarcastic, but I can almost guarantee you that there would have been no shutdown and the virus would have been treated no differently than what H1N1 or any of the other recent pandemics were, if Obama was still POTUS.
This is all 99% TDS, we must get rid of bad orange man no matter what the cost. If we have to burn it all down, so be it.
Absolutely.
if Hillary were president we’d be in an occupational war in Syria and this would be a mere afterthought for the media.
Sounds about right.
If the ‘Rona targeted young men, we’d treat it like we treat all our wars…
/Scott Adams
All I know is that I am the one, true libertarian.
THEN WHY ARE YOU RUINING OUR COUNTRY!?!?/ Pogressive Left and Tucker Conservative Right.
That can’t be true. Experts say I am the one true libertarian.
Listen at ya’ll fakers. I’m the only one who scored higher than Ron Paul on the libertarian purity test!
Are we sure about that test’s accuracy and methodology? It might not be measuring the correct variables.
So coronavirus is the Hihnfection?
If that is the case, then i might become a utilitarian libertarian and abandon my principles. The Hihnfection is to much to be allowed to exist. We must implement tyrannical controls to stamp it out.
Hey Pie, this one’s OT, but I’m directing it to you since you left an implied question to me in a dead thread a few days ago.
I was describing one of my daughters new connections to the state unemployment system, and used the phrase “…homeschooled high-school girls…” for her peer group. You said something like (paraphrasing) “that sounds like an oxymoron”.
I don’t know if you were serious or just jesting, but in case it’s the former, here’s my explanation: As conventionally used here, “high-school” just refers to what’s normally called grades 9-12. There are government high schools and private high schools, but they all stick to those numbers. For homeschooling, grades are generally the same. If you’re a homeschooling parent or student, then (except for extreme fringe cases), you’re in a certain grade. This is for all the “normal” reasons – curricula are generally set up that way, you gotta have some system so use the known one, etc. So a “homeschooled high-school” student is just a homeschooler in grades 9-12. 99.9% of homeschoolers would totally understand it that way.
She (like many homeschooled students, and also normies) is simultaneously in 12th grade and college. Doing some college classes in your (mostly) 11th and 12th grade years is super-common. Some classes are vocational, and some are set up as joint-enrollment, where you get credit for 11th-grade History (for example) and whatever the basic college history is all at one go. It’s reasonably common to finish HS with also an Associate Degree from a college, which can shorten their next level of college and get done faster.
In her case, she’ll end up with almost all of an Associate Degree and all but one Semester of her EMT (Emergency Medical Technician) training before she graduates from 12th grade. Summer semester will finish the full EMT program, so at 17 she’ll be fully-cooked for an EMT job. She will do the next 2-3 semesters (short because of all the core she’s already taken) getting a full Paramedic degree. My oldest son graduated HS with all of his basic welding training (not pipe, pressure, or specialty) done, and also about one semester of core knocked off of college. He’s in for Civil Engineering now.
Didn’t know if you were serious, but if so, there.
Studying and preparing for actual marketable careers while taking on minimum debt? What suckers they are!
All that work when they could have gone to a trad-college, lived like an extra in Caligula for four years, studied something completely useless, graduated with a mortgage worth of debt and then get bailed out!
I think in the back of his mind, he’s still trying to work out how to make a career out of mountain-man/prospector/trapper.
Your kids sound competent, capable, and resilient.
Gonna need your address so I can call in CPS, that can’t be approved by child development specialists.
That and a subscription to Teen Vogue.
https://www.teenvogue.com/story/bernie-sanders-interview-struggle-continues-2020-election-coronavirus-relief
I was half joking mostly i knew what you meant but it seemed a discrepancy in my mind. So is she hot? Age of consent is 15 in Romania so it is not creepy that i ask
News you can use.
https://journals.lww.com/plasreconsurg/Abstract/2014/09000/Population_Analysis_of_the_Perfect_Breast__A.8.aspx
Whatever’s at hand, surely.
Now do China.
https://www.stamfordadvocate.com/news/article/Under-Trump-coronavirus-scientists-can-speak-15219843.php
Shitheads.
Under Trump, coronavirus scientists can speak – as long as they toe the line
Glibs everywhere are triggered.
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01108-y
Under Trump, coronavirus scientists can speak – as long as they toe the line
Never mind that scientist of stripes freely contradict the “line” 24/7.
Well butter my butt and call me a biscuit, the heads of federal agencies answer to the President? Well this is just a goddamn travesty. All of science has been upended by the structure of the federal bureaucracy which has only been in place for a hundred years or so.
Today in everything is politics:
*snort*
Not only is politics show biz for ugly people, it’s the “Kardashians” for people who think they are smarter than you.
It’s sports for the talentless. MUH TEAM!
“Jordan, who coughed repeatedly while awaiting his turn to speak, did not wear a mask while seated on the floor, or at the lectern.”
I love the Troll Era of American Politics so much more than the Dignified Statesman Era.
I don’t know if you were living in NYC during 9/11 Rhy, but this Kung Flu episode has greatly saddened me. Granted this “crisis” is largely manufactured and self-inflicted, but it gets me thinking of post-9/11 when for one golden second, the divisions in the country seemed to disappear. I know most of that goodwill was flushed in the years following as Bush the Lesser started bombing everything that moved, but even still, it’s hard for me to imagine the country pulling together even during a legit crisis like that.
That was an illusion. I remember college football games and concerts getting cancelled on the other side of the country for weeks after 9/11. And noxious candlelight vigils with pictures of tear ductless eagles crying.
I may be mis-remembering, but didn’t Harry Read get up and call Bush a pussy for not retaliating when the first bombs were dropping?
Did he want Bush to drop bombs on United Airlines HQ??
Having lived through it and working the markets while it occurred it was appreciated for about 2 weeks.
All the tears and thoughts were just a reminder how our government failed us in so many ways. And they learned nothing. I was stuck on Manhattan island that day. No real way to get across the river to NJ. And in 2003 when the great blackout came I was once again stuck in Manhattan.
Top. Men.
It was only three days, at least for me. The NCAA let individual conferences decide whether to play the scheduled football games that following Saturday. I would have liked to start getting back to normal with a little sports. Most of the conferences postponed that week’s games, but the SEC decided they’d go ahead and hold their games. The New York media had a shitfit, wondering how the southeast could do that while New York was still suffering.
Fuck the NYC types for that. (Sorry Rhywun and l0b0t.)
The good will was always an illusion Q. I was in 7th grade. We had two 90 minute classes in the morning, two after lunch. I had English first period, we watched the news in dead silence. We moved to our next class at 10:10, ten minutes after the collapse of the South Tower. Class began at 10:15. My next class was this “gifted and talented” type class, where we did all kinds of various different logical exercises and did some higher level type stuff. Teacher was a pretty stereotypical academic leftist. He refused to turn on the TV. Instead, he began to inform us of the “necessary context” which was just a bunch of Howard Zinn/Noam Chomsky type bullshit. We were hearing this straight up Marxist cant right as the North Tower collapsed.
I was 12 years old, and that’s the day I learned about enemies foreign and domestic.
Yup. September 12 was the last day I listened to Pacifica Radio.
They were celebrating.
Mom was adamant about not playing it live in class that day. She later said she knew it’s all her students would see for months and she wanted to spare them a last normal morning, but I think she was just being her typical contrary self.
Yes, and I was working across Occupy Wall Street Park from the WTC.
I don’t really know what to make of what is going on today. Other than something like “the country is broken”.
the 9/11 reactions demonstrate that there is nothing inherently decent about unity
That really seems to escape most people, doesn’t it? Just as they don’t understand the Salem witch trials or lynching of blacks accused or raping white women. Those are fine examples of unified communities too.
RINO CUCK Jonah Goldberg had a fantastic spiel on the false premise of national unity a week or whatever ago.
The relationship with my then-boyfriend was rocky before 9/11. It drastically improved literally on 9/12… and lasted for almost another year.
I had no idea there were Ulstermen among the Congressional Dems
Very good article, Pie. I enjoyed it. I don’t need every argument to proceed like a vector. This reads more like a compilation of observations around a particular topic and a way of searching for some coherence in all of it. Which is pretty meta considering that your topic covers that exact issue. (Rationalism v. Empiricism, as someone else noted above, or reason vs. utility.)
One of the best books I’ve ever read is called “Everyday Ethics.” (I kid you not I found it lying on a bookshelf in some abandoned room at a base I was at in the mountains of Afghanistan). One of the lines that stuck with me vis a vis convincing other people of things was this (paraphrasing): if you are engaged in a debate/discussion with someone that appears to be headed to an impasse, you should ask the other person as sincerely as possible what it would take for them to believe the opposite of what they believe. i.e. What fact or assumption (assuming the reasoning isn’t just completely unhinged) would be required to be different for their opinion to change?
His conclusion was that if they can’t answer that, there really is no reason to continue debating. They hold a non-falsifiable belief and they’re telling you it can’t be changed. It’s amazing how many people really are like that. And you all can guess exactly whom/what I blame for that (PublicEd). Most people’s brains are mush, they have no idea from whence their opinions come (state propaganda and emotions), but they fucking LOVE science!
I don’t know. there are a lot of things i cannot be convinced of otherwise. I cannot be convinced that Liberty is not good, or that we should abandon it.
Not arguing that continued debate isn’t worthless, it is. Just saying i think having beleifs that you wont be convinced of otherwise is not a bad thing. If you have done study and become convinced of the truth of something, then it would be very hard to articulate what could change your mind.
I get that, but I assure you that engaging in the discussion of “what would have to be different” will do more to help you understand what your principles really are than perhaps any other exercise in which you could engage. More to the point of the article about convincing others, asking them to engage in that same exercise will challenge them in a way that they unfortunately haven’t been challenged. (((You people))) have to constantly defend your principles and beliefs against challenge every day; the “normies” and “leftists” do not. Politely asking them to do it serves both a “principled” purpose and a “utilitarian” one: you may plant a seed that will gnaw at them and when the stare at you blankly, you’ll both know that one of you is close-minded and that there’s little point in continuing the debate.
My opinion is that liberty is better than tyranny.
If the facts showed tryanny led to a happier and more productive life, I don’t think I would change my mind, I would be skeptical of the facts, since that seems to be a self-refuting idea.
I don’t think that proves my head is full of mush, but I could be wrong, just ask my wife.
They hold a non-falsifiable belief – thing is the most basic principles are kind of like this
Forced to their doom!
After Las Vegas Mayor Carolyn Goodman called Wednesday for the swift reopening of hotels and casinos, many who earn their livelihoods in such establishments said they were afraid to return unless strict safety measures were introduced for themselves and guests.
Although Goodman said the businesses should reopen, she provided no guidelines on how they should handle social distancing and other safety measures to prevent the spread of the coronavirus.
“I want us open in the city of Las Vegas so our people can go back to work,” Goodman said in a CNN interview. She was asked how that could be accomplished while prioritizing employees’ safety by implementing social distancing.
“That’s up to them to figure out. I don’t own a casino,” she said.
D. Taylor, the president of UNITE Here, a union that represents more than 300,000 hospitality workers across the country, called Goodman’s comments “one of the worst things I’ve heard.”
“Nobody wants people to go back more than I do, but everyone wants to go back to a safe and secure workplace and not be an experiment in a petri dish,” Taylor said.
And, of course, being “allowed” to go back to work is exactly the same as being whipped into the fields with a cat o’ nine tails.
You see, here is how this works. I don’t know if she has figured this out yet, but from what I just read, I think she has.
Open for business, it’s up to you if you want to go back to work, no one is forcing you. If you don’t go back to work, be assured, those positions will be filled very quickly.
I have a feeling that a lot of those saying they’re afraid to go back to work, will change their mind very quickly.
Most people who are able bodied enough to go work, ARE NOT AT MUCH RISK! Now, if the nursing home wants to wheel in a granny slot machine addiction tour, you may want to figure out how to deal with that particular situation.
For crying out loud, people, get a fucking grip already!
Nobody wants people to go back more than I do, but
Once again, ignore everything before the “but”.
They want to wait out their unemployment benefits before they risk it.
guidelines on how they should handle
Wash your hands and don’t fondle strangers.
Would “wash your hands after you fondle strangers” be acceptable?
Hygienically as long as you do it before touching your face. Socially/legally on the other hand…
Not enough lampposts
https://www.registerguard.com/news/20200423/lane-county-considering-compelling-hotels-to-take-unhoused-covid-19-patients
And this is from a nominally “conservative” board. No present need but these assholes are planning just the same.
That’s worthy of NJ…
I’d pay the first unhoused placed with me to burn the place down if I owned it.
5 beds needs for positive bums? There’s 5 commissioners. Each ones can take one in.
As if homeless bums would willingly isolate themselves in a hotel room and not destroy it or attempt to break quarantine for their fix of whatever they need.
Though Gaffney expressed to them she believes some of the reluctance from hotels is about “fear that is not based in science,” north Eugene Commissioner Pat Farr said he can understand their concerns.
“When we talk about irrational fears and non-scientific concerns, in many cases we’re talking about people working for the hotels,” Farr said at the meeting. “The fear is that they would be exposed.”
Oh yes, those hotels are not using science. Does that mean these Covid cases pose no risk? Obviously the commissioners and their science believe there is risk or they wouldn’t segregate.
Thank you for a logical wedge besides “Dear fucking poopy head” and “eat a bowl of dicks and birdshot, you fascist asshole”. My rage meter was pegged.
I’m just so mad. The county health department has a history of building these palace clinics at a time when services such as vaccinations are available at low cost providers such as pharmacies than they ever were. The department’s last big push was to ban tobacco use in county parks, most of which are non-urban large acreage open air sites and for adults 18-20 entirely. For this recent crisis, they bought a building that’s been sitting on the market for years and will be a millstone for years afterwards.
The fear is that they would be exposed
That’s an entirely rational fear. If these are actively infected patients, then anyone who goes into their rooms (or is in their presence, regardless of where they are) is going to need use droplet precautions (N95 mask, gloves, suit). While those can be acquired, they have to be used correctly every single time. On our COVID units, we train and drill our staff, and “donning and doffing” is always done with an “auditor”, an observer to make sure its done correctly.
Back in the Ebola days, clinical staff who caught it did so because they weren’t using the PPE correctly. Its not that easy.
Thank you also RC.
I’m going to paint this afternoon and see if I can write something legible later.
Local hotels become subjected to a mysterious increase in arson.
The Present is a vast, chaotic, interconnected system of relationships between people and things, unimaginable in its complexity.
The Future is The Present’s unintended consequence.
How are those crazy libertarian Swedes doing with the Commie Cough without lockdowns?
Past the peak like us and less likely to get future spikes.
Stockholm Expected to Reach “Herd Immunity” in Weeks
Yes, with infection and death rates just about the same as the US. Just without the shutdown economy.
200 deaths per million vs 148 in the US, but I bet we catch up.
NYC is doing its best!
Did you have a cough before you jumped off that roof? – COVID-19!
200 deaths per million vs 148 in the US,
The lockdown was to prevent deaths primarily by keeping the health care system from being overwhelmed. Since that has not happened in either Sweden or the US, the relative death rates do not present an argument for the effectiveness of the lockdown. There are too many confounding variables that go into the death rate to use it as a justification for the lockdown.
The effectiveness of the lockdown is illustrated only by the relative infection rates, as it can only prevent infection, and not death once infected. Sweden’s rate per million is less than ours, and not by a little (on day 46, Sweden was at 1,154 per million, and we were at 2,548 per million). Which also shows that there must be confounding variables with the death rate, since Sweden has a lower infection rate and a higher death rate.
Even that is arguable, because if Sweden gets to herd immunity faster, then there can be no argument that I can think of that not locking down was a mistake. To the extent the lockdown slows getting to herd immunity by slowing down the spread of the disease to low-risk populations, it actually hurts us. Herd immunity is the holy grail of infection control, after all.
“But now, the country’s chief epidemiologist said the strategy appears to be working and that “herd immunity” could be reached in the capital Stockholm in a matter of weeks.”
Huh. Weren’t we just assured a couple of weeks ago, by our esteemed media, that everyone in Sweden would be dead by now because of their recklessness?
I understand things get really weird there around the middle of summer.
The thing about freedom is that American federalism has resulted in 50 similar places where you can go to be told in varying degrees what to do. I wish that the American experiment would create just one of those “laboratories” where people who wanted tiny government could go and give it a shot.
Unfortunately the frontier is closed. A couple of centuries ago I suspect most people here, if young and healthy enough, would be the type to pick up and head west just to escape the Karens, statists, and other assholes.
1 Deadwood
I think in part there is a generally shared culture across the USA. Differences are typically minor, and so once a few states do something, then other legislatures and people will point and say “look, they do it there”, and it doesn’t generate quite the same response as “in Eupope they do/have X”.
Also people love to control others.
Bingo. Let the prog states go for their Marxist utopias and hopefully there would be a stab at a minarchist state as well.
What I hate most about American politics is the mania on both sides to imposing their vision on the country as a whole. The constitution should be the only federal law necessary. The rest should be up to the states.
The Progressive Era killed that, forever.
My libertarianism is based on applying the formulae of the NAP and Self-Ownership to individual issues & daily life. Just happens that libertarianism, IMO, fits into the NAP and PSO best.
But what is the cost benefit analysis of NAP vs the odds of you being a boyar not a serf in a feudal order?
You will be a serf. Or a gulag inmate.
Speaking of Libertarians, Mark Cuban is on Fox talking about his libertarian leanings. He is concerned about the Fed printing all this money, but doesn’t see any alternative since we are in a “life or death” situation.
The life or death situation would the insane economic path willingly chosen?
We have to destroy the village to save it!
We’re so far beyond any semblance of a “libertarian” currency system that it’s really a silly question anyway.
There is no libertarian solution to the current problem that does not involve massive economic disruption. The house of cards is built and everyone is trying to figure out how to keep it standing in a hurricane. The libertarian solution would be to let it crumble.
I think there are a few people that are trying to co-opt the term “libertarian”.
Strange… Why would they want to do that?
Is it because they think we run the world?
I had a conversation with a friend a few weeks ago.
Libertarians assume that people should be able to do what they like so long as they are not harming anyone else. This means that assholes are free to be assholes so long as they don’t hurt other people. We have to tolerate the presence of assholes in society.
Assholes, then latch onto the libertarian label and claim that being an asshole is synonymous with being a libertarian. This, of course, re-enforces the notion that libertarians are assholes with liberals and conservatives that want to assume the worst human instincts are what motivates libertarians.
So, yes there are some people that want to own the libertarian label for personal gain.
Add to that the legal versus moral discussion, and the very specific portion of that which involves passing moral judgment without the invocation of a hate(thought) crime.
One of my objections to utilitarianism is that it is inherently collective. It looks at collective benefit compared to collective burden. It has no inherent respect for? accounting for? individual agency, rights, responsibility. It will always tend toward sacrificing the individual for the collective benefit. I think its baked in. While you may be able to construct a utilitarian argument for liberty, you will be building on sand.
It is useful as an approach to persuading people, but I don’t think it can be the foundation of a free society.
Multiplication is a bitch. A minor benefit to many can outweigh a major harm to few. Just be lucky to not be among the few!
I think, between that and how the benefits and harms get measured, is where utilitarianism starts to pave that road to hell.
I think, between that and how the benefits and harms get measured
This. This system requires that you have some method of measuring utility/happiness that is comparable between people, which you can’t do. So you inevitable get “Well i think this is what i think is good, so this is what you get”.
major harm to few
since con law and property, Mijo can’t go five minutes without launching into some takings clause tirade
/ proud padre
My libertarianism morphed from Southern Baptist “conspiracy theory” Republicanism, and I put “conspiracy theory” in quotes because all of it has come to pass, to Rush Limbaugh Republicanism.
In scanning keepsakes, I went through some of the embarrassing stuff I wrote for different college newspapers and I think it really started with PETA throwing paint on people’s fur coats and the shutdown of Geneva Steel in Orem, Utah. That fur coat is the owner’s and I have a soft spot in my heart for steel mills. What magnificent things man can make! They make big things to make bigger things. How incredibly wonderful!
Some things I noticed started to not ring true. They were little things. I couldn’t tell you what they were. I was indifferent about the rah-rah-sis-boom-bah fuck yeah Murka post 9/11. I noted that the Dixie Chicks tanked their career with no judgment attached and got attacked for “taking their side”. I was disappointed with the response. I vaguely felt the Patriot Act was Not A Good Thing. I got my IRS debt forgiven, but I felt that was only fair since I wasn’t making that much anyway and was being punished for being single (I believe that’s one of Nikki The Worst’s complaints, no?). I was a staunch right-wing Christian conservative through most of that. I kept my mouth shut in college. I ranted with my bestie at the time.
Then I read Atlas Shrugged (after reading The Fountainhead) and all the bits and pieces floating around in my head and soul kind of clicked. I kicked out the right-wing talking points and I started not to be able to listen to Limbaugh. I don’t know. It was just a progression of little things rolling up. I met Mr. Mojeaux, who was mostly apolitical leaning Republican, unlike the rest of his family, and converted him to libertarianism. The rest of his family thinks he’s a Republican but they aren’t big on nuance.
My family just decided not to talk about politics because now it comes down to culture and my brothers and I couldn’t be more different in outlook if we’d planned it. And of course, as my mother gets older, she gets more orthodox and devout–she tries anyway, but she constantly fights more “Wait, that isn’t really right” thoughts because God might strike her dead. She’s more libertarian than not but after a lifetime of “X is a sin” she doesn’t voice those things very often.
Also, I’m not quite sure putting almond extract in my honey-pecan whipped cream cheese was a good idea.
punished for being single
How so? Can’t remember any specifics, but I’ve always had the vague idea that the tax code had more of a “marriage penalty” than a “single penalty”.
I think there is a bit of a Marriage Penalty, IF both of you work well paying jobs. But If you have a family and one of the parents is Stay at Home, then there is a slight benefit.
/Not an Accountant, just what i’ve seen.
Definitely a big hit if you and the spouse make about the same money.
The best tax circumstance from family structure is one well-paying job, a stay at home parent and a couple of little deductions.
^^^ That.
The best tax circumstance from family structure is one well-paying job,
a stay at homean off-the-books parent and a couple of little deductions.Pin money.
*Pins are expensive these days.
Nooooooooooooooooottttttttttttttttt necessarily.
Depends on what the off-the-books parent is actually doing and how s/he gets paid (cash/credit card/checks). 1099s are the bane of my existence, especially once my overseas clients started having US addresses because they needed to start sending 1099s. Five years ago, half my client base was overseas and weren’t sending 1099s. That was a lovely time.
Let’s say that the off-the-books spouse needs to buy stuff for the business. In my case, it’s a lot of intangibles like ISBNs, stock photo subscriptions, websites, domain names (I have a gazillion of those I keep just so other people can’t have them). Long ago, I learned to order my family’s financial life around the Schedule C. Other than food and gas, I don’t buy ANYTHING I can’t justify deducting.
So the would-be off-the-books spouse is starting to rack up some real expenses. S/he has to figure out whether to eat that cost and that would depend on whether the people paying him/her are going to report that as a line item on THEIR Schedule C.
And then something happens that one of your major clients suddenly decided to get his taxes professionally done and his accountant sends you a 1099 in the middle of April. Lucky for me, I reported that income so it was irrelevant. But if I hadn’t…I’d be staring at an amended return, possibly returning some of my refund, and/or triggering an audit.
AH… I see where you went wrong. You’re not deducting food and gas.
I haven’t figured out a way to justify it to an IRS agent.
If you are getting 1099s, you aren’t off-the-books. If you are filing a tax return for your off-the-books business, you aren’t off-the-books. An off-the-books business covers its expenses with its income, and none of it is reported. Its before-tax income is the same as its after-tax income.
What you are describing is an on-the-books small business. Which absolutely gets tax penalties, although it can be manipulated (and most are) to convert regular living expenses into deductible business expenses.
Well, I know the difference. What I was trying to describe (and I think I’m going to stop talking for the day because I’m not saying anything right) is the point at which the person the off-the-books spouse is working for decides to make him/her on the books for his own tax purposes.
Well, it depends. The benefit of being married doesn’t really start in until you have a kid or two. Nikki The Worst is an anti-natalist and so her complaints were half the time rooted in objecting to special credits when you had them.
Anyway.
Marriage “penalty” usually kicks in when you have two high-ish earners. If one is a stay-at-home spouse or has a piddly little hobby job or pin-money job, it brings down the average between them and enhances the value of the standard deduction.
So there’s a sliding scale from bonus to penalty. And then there’s the AMT, from which you cannot be saved if you make that much.
Makes sense.
That reminds me:
Where’s my fucking refund already?
IRS website,
where’s My Payment?
A part of me dies every time someone credits Ayn Rand for them becoming libertarian.
Objectivists have no place in libertopia. I have spoken.
Agreed.
*shrug* I recognize Rand’s work as a fairy tale, a fable, maybe a parable. I always have. I don’t live by those ideals because they are impossible.
Oh, did I forget a solid grounding in Laura Ingalls Wilder as a wee bairn? No? I should not have forgotten that because it’s truly significant.
Rand didn’t make me a libertarian. She brought all the bits and pieces of “that isn’t quite right” floating around in my head together and made them make sense of what I was seeing/hearing.
Nothing personal against you, or anyone else, it is just so fucking cliché.
I feel similarly about Camille Paglia. She’s no libertarian but she got me thinking.
What about those of us who credit Heinlein?
Exactly the point, there are so many other entry points, and yet Rand is so stereotypical.
For me it was CS Lewis.
His collection of essays entitled “God in the Dock” primarily.
For me it was Stossel first, then Friedman, Williams, and Sowell.
Later I’ve read Rockwell, Hans-Hermann Hoppe, and Rothbard.
As long as you don’t spout the “You have to serve in the military to have full rights” bullshit.
Entertainingly enough, even in the book the real justification for keeping that system was that it had worked so far. I’m much more interested in a system like the Moon is a Harsh Mistress, one house responsible for passing laws (60% required), one responsible for repealing laws (33% required).
I prefer that any rep voting for a law is required to fund it himself.
There is only one kind of libertarian. Start with self-ownership and follow that to its logical conclusions. It turns out to be a narrow, one-way street.
Let us be more inclusive in these trying times
Fuck off, Tulpa.
An agust member of this forum being called the T word. Why I never! The sheer audacity
Says the guy who just excluded Objectivists. Shit-stirrer.
More inclusive but some things are going to far
^^THIS^^
Those who start with the NAP instead will be 2nd against the wall (after the INTJs).
Hey now! Wait a minute!
Melting glaciers reveal lost mountain pass and artifacts used by Vikings
Neat.
/head desk.
I am not even sure what to say about this. What can you say to a religious fanatic?
Isn’t a melting glacier (allegedly) part of climate change? How can the thing that’s happening be its own cause? Not counting feedback loops.
This isn’t quite wet streets cause rain, but it’s close to water in the streets causes them to be wet.
As long as they don’t assert that it’s man-made, the statement is still accurate, we’re no longer in the little ice age.
The man-made is implied, and I have no doubt is intended by the author.
Otherwise, there would be some reference to the artifacts being preserved under ice when the climate changed hundreds of years ago, and are now being revealed as the climate reverts back to being as warm as it was then.
But no, for these ahistorical nitwits, there is only the eternal now.
Are you saying the Vikings didn’t live encased in ice? I can’t even.
It’s so sad that for over 700 years those artifacts were scattered on top of the shiny, glistening, ice – a shrine which endured for more than another millennium until the great melt. Who knows what treasures were lost as the waters washed them away.
Fake news.
It has never been warmer than it is now.
@Agent Cooper from dedthread:
My work is also quite brain-draining, which in turn affects my body. I’ve done heavy DIY work (framing a closet and part of a bedroom, hanging and mudding sheetrock) for entire days and don’t remember crashing in my chair as wiped as I am after a day of intense formatting.
My political/philosophical leanings primarily come from a family tradition of self-reliance.
My father always said that if you expect the government to save you, your going to probably end up dead sooner rather than later.
That and “Nobody owes you anything”
This neatly fits in one of my categories 🙂
Our fearless leader, dear Governor Twhitmer, strikes again. I’m not sure she could be more arrogant, privileged, and tone-deaf if she tried.
The privileged class must be served – see Viking’s post in the AM.
That’s not a layoff. That’s a furlough. When you are laid off, you don’t have a job (and don’t have benefits). When you are furloughed, you still have a job (and benefits), but you aren’t paid (although you can cash in PTO).
So she’s basically just shifting the accounting for their pay to a different cost center – unemployment. I’m sure some to many of them are also taking a pay cut, which is good, because unemployment is capped at something less than they were making.
For a brief shining moment, she had a real shot at the VP. She pisses it away every day, because she is the archetypal Karen, and most people hate Karens. Including other Karens.
Yeah, but they’re picking up an extra $600/week from the Feds right now.
Is that extra $600 taxable?
Yes and it counts towards other means-tested welfare eligibility other than Medicaid and CHIP.
Maybe. The way the $600 is supposed to work (at least, that’s the way it works in Arizona) is that it increases the amount you can qualify for. The amount you can qualify for is still some kind of average of your income over the last year (or whatever).*
So, if you’ve been making $400/week for the last year, that’s all you’ll get from unemployment. Not $600, and not $400 plus $600.
*Your state may vary, but I’ve never heard of unemployment that pays more than you were actually making. Absent, of course, fraud.
Sounds like it varies by state but I believe some are adding in a full $600.
Yup. A couple GOP govs and senators were raising this point last week.
That’s what makes this different. The $600 is a flat on top of whatever the state is already paying. Even if it’s more than you were making apparently.
In some states it will become +$600, so the lower wage workers may end-up with benefits exceeding wages. Some Senators called this out prior to passage, but they are icky. Mnuchin indicated there was no choice given the antiquated UI systems in some states.
I’ll be damned. Pretty sure that’s not the way it is being implemented here.
Really? how exactly do I get the 600 from? California pays me 307 a week,
You should (or already have) be getting an additional $600 automatically, depending on when your check is paid.
https://www.edd.ca.gov/about_edd/coronavirus-2019/workers.htm
Thanks! I’ll be getting it on my second check, 1814$ for 2 weeks?
I’ll take it,
This is all a bunch of fucking bullshit.
There had better be a full on rebellion by all of those put out of work by this clusterfuck.
I’d like to see a new law passed, at the federal level. You want to implement a lockdown and prohibit people from going to work? If you put something like this in place again, you have to immediately lay off the entire state’s government workforce. That includes you, governor Karen, no pay for any of you until everyone else can go back to work.
Well not entirely. Make them dollar a year men (or women) so the Gov and others still have to do their jobs and quitting is voluntary not a layoff.
Remember how much we had to feel for the Federal workers who were fulouighed during a shutdown. Now if you complain about having a job, you really ought to shut the fuck up and be grateful the government hasn’t deemed your life non-essential.
Yeah been saying it all along: if the teachers sitting at home were on half pay, they’d be rioting at the state Capitol.
The “extra” $600 a week is to prevent rebellion.
Not having to wait in line isn’t an unfair advantage?
And in the very next sentence she refers to process the proles have to go through as a “stressor”. What a stupid bint – she can’t go two sentences without contradicting herself.
No no no… lines are an equitable and preferable distribution process!
/Bernie
It’s all online, stressor with a beer in hand,
There’s the arrogant, privileged, and tone-deaf front and center.
She really is appalling.
And of course, nobody in the press asked her how going through the process could be a stressor, but not going through the process wasn’t an unfair advantage.
Yup. The bungling of Murphy “The Bill of Rights is above my Pay Grade” and Whitmer “Why do you need rights when it’s snowing” makes me happy. Yes it’s infuriating that they are in power. But it is powerful message to show that they are woefuly inept. So much so that they can’t even get good talking points together for some of the most expected questions that they would get.
It would make me happy if I thought people were paying attention or cared about either issue.
Maybe because I work with a bunch of proggies, my perception is screwed, but all I hear about is how stupid the protesters are.
When they talk about Gov Blackface, I never hear a mention of overreach or any questions of does he have the authority to do that.
Maybe because I work with a bunch of proggies, my perception is screwed, but all I hear about is how stupid the protesters are.
I used to work with a bunch of proggies, and i know what you mean. Now i work from home, and the only guy i talk with is from Michigan and he is pissed. So i might be screwed up too. The people around us really do influence a lot of how we perceive things.
Murphy’s popularity has increased since he declared NJ a Constitution free zone.
We’ll see how his alleged “popularity” is in another month or so.
https://www.nj.com/coronavirus/2020/04/im-not-sure-about-memorial-day-murphy-says-as-nj-remains-under-near-lockdown-due-to-coronavirus.html
NJ Ds are well protected by the media. It will be interesting.
So coming up on another month when more bills are due…haven’t seen UI monies, stuck at home, and hoping you can finally get on the site to start the process of enrollment isnt as big as a stressor as working.
God these people.
#Learn2Essential brah!
I am no Twitter person but has #learn2essential been taken to help spread Coumos advice?
Also read the rest of his quote today and the second part was worse…
There are people hiring. You can get a job as an essential worker, so now you can go to work and now you are an essential worker and now you won’t kill anyone”
So any job deemed not essential and you work for them…you will kill someone.
I had no idea essential workers were magically transmuted into people incapable of spreading an infectious disease. How cool is that!
That is far worse than bitter clingers, you didnt build that, and deplorables all rolled up.
Makes for a fantastic campaign ad even if he isn’t running
Perhaps the Dems will end up with Cuomo as the presidential nominee and Whitmer as his running mate?
Speaking of great campaign ads:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7DKYML2MRs
Does no one remember Schindler’s List and the Jews claiming they were “Essential Workers”? I mean, it’s not a great look.
I can’t get any oxygen into my lungs – the Bee has killed me.
OMG that picture.
LOL!
lol
Funny how the ChiComs’ strategy is exactly the same as the Democrats’.
https://www.breitbart.com/asia/2020/04/23/china-we-cant-dismiss-america-as-coronavirus-origin-until-u-s-proves-otherwise/
Namely: accuse your enemy of exactly the thing you have obviously done, demand they prove a negative and then use your propaganda machine to run interference.
They all grew up reading the same books.
Speaking of Libertarians, Mark Cuban is on Fox talking about his libertarian leanings. He is concerned about the Fed printing all this money, but doesn’t see any alternative since we are in a “life or death” situation.
I guess noted libertarian Ray Dalio was not available.
I suppose Cuban as a Dem would be a hair better than the cadre of true believers angling for nominations.
I certainly hope that there is some kind of reckoning coming to higher ed.
http://archive.is/2rUFu
Though I doubt it.