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CrazyCatLord
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 25, 2011
Posts: 2177
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 Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:04 pm Post subject: |
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| Burzum wrote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
Libertarianism also ignores that we live on a planet with limited resources and limited living space. |
No it doesn't. As resources become more scarce their prices increase, and so people will naturally ration them until a cheaper alternative is discovered. |
At that point, we will already have chopped down all rainforests and blown most fossil fuel reserves into the air in form of CO2. From there on in, it will be a fight for our bare lives. We will not only have to ration fuel, but also food and water (always supposing that our planet still supports human life at all once CO2 levels have reached a tipping point and begin spiraling up by themselves).
| Quote: | | As for living space, what do you suggest we do? Make having too many babies illegal? |
That might be unavoidable in the long run. The world population has more than tripled in the last century. Can you imagine what happens if it so much as doubles within the next 50 years?
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: | | It ignores that everyone could have a worthwhile life if these resources were distributed more evenly |
"A society that puts equality before freedom will get neither. A society that puts freedom before equality will get a high degree of both." ~~ Milton Friedman |
I think the current socio-economic situation in the USA proves Mr. Friedman wrong. People have a high degree of freedom, but equality? Some are dying in the streets, whereas others own several ten billion dollar mansions and a private fleet of yachts. That is utterly obscene, imho. Freedom isn't worth anything if you lack the basic necessities of life.
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: | | When I look at the ridiculously rich, I always imagine ten people who order a pizza. When the pizza arrives one of them takes 9 slices and nobody says a word about it. He has the right to take the lion share. Why? Because his parents have already done that. It's his birthright. |
Your analogy is neither logical nor demonstrative of anything wrong with libertarianism. Should I not have the right to write my will as I please? If not, who writes it for me? |
Yes, it isn't logical at all that anyone should get nine slices of a ten slice pizza just because he inherited an obscene amount of wealth.
To answer your question: Supposing that you pay your fair share of taxes (which the top 0.1% in the USA are currently not doing), you can will your property to anyone you want. But I think there should be a cut-off for inheritances, as well as a cut-off for personal wealth in general.
Research has shown that too much personal wealth makes people less compassionate, less cooperative and more selfish:
http://www.economist.com/node/16690659
Of course it could also be that utterly selfish people, such as narcissists and borderline sociopaths, are more likely to rise to the top in a bareknuckle market economy. All the more reason to strongly encourage the rich to play nice with others and share their toys. That's a lesson they should have learned in kindergarden. |
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CrazyCatLord
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 25, 2011
Posts: 2177
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:23 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | Oodain wrote: |
everything you own and all value you hold to society and as such to yourself comes from the coorperation with others
so yes you should be able to write your own will, that will should also be taxable, depending on several factors. |
You you think private property is a privilege granted by a society or a natural human right?
If one trades his labor for a product or someone else's labor does he not own what he worked for?
ruveyn |
There are no natural human rights. Nature doesn't grant or respect rights, it only equips people with certain abilities. You have the ability to create a tool and call it your property. A bigger, meaner guy than you has the ability to beat you into a twitching, whimpering pulp and take your supposed property away. That's nature for you.
I think we can all agree that we don't like the natural state of things very much. That's why human societies agree on certain human rights, as well as laws that protect the individual from bigger and meaner people. But if the latter manage to grab a lion's share of the public wealth without doing any actual work, while many hard-working people are about to lose their homes, the system is apparently not working satisfactorily. |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29324
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 3:26 pm Post subject: |
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| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I think we can all agree that we don't like the natural state of things very much. That's why human societies agree on certain human rights, as well as laws that protect the individual from bigger and meaner people. But if the latter manage to grab a lion's share of the public wealth without doing any actual work, while many hard-working people are about to lose their homes, the system is apparently not working satisfactorily. |
Let us have a revolution then.
ruveyn |
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Burzum
Indeed
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1205
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 8:29 pm Post subject: |
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| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
At that point, we will already have chopped down all rainforests |
No, because forests are replanted. Here's a chart of forest area in the USA over time. Notice how it isn't decreasing but remaining static despite the fact that 95-98% of forest area within the USA has been logged at least once.
Picture resized
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | and blown most fossil fuel reserves into the air in form of CO2. |
We are never going to run out of fossil fuels. Why? Because as supply of fossil fuels decreases, the price increases and thus usage decreases, and you will eventually hit a point where it is simply too expensive to use fossil fuels as an energy source. We are never going to run out of an energy source either. We already know of alternative energy sources, they are just too expensive to use right now in comparison to fossil fuels. When the price of fossil fuels overtakes the alternative resources, we will naturally and gradually shift to using them instead of fossil fuels.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | supposing that our planet still supports human life at all once CO2 levels have reached a tipping point and begin spiraling up by themselves |
Nonsense. Anyway, restricting the supply of fossil fuels would put countless numbers of people into poverty or worse.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
That might be unavoidable in the long run. The world population has more than tripled in the last century. Can you imagine what happens if it so much as doubles within the next 50 years? |
Do you describe yourself as a liberal? Because making it illegal for people to have children is an authoritarian measure.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I think the current socio-economic situation in the USA proves Mr. Friedman wrong. People have a high degree of freedom, but equality? Some are dying in the streets, whereas others own several ten billion dollar mansions and a private fleet of yachts. That is utterly obscene, imho. Freedom isn't worth anything if you lack the basic necessities of life. |
The USA is a corporatocracy. Countries such as Denmark, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which some people have the hide to describe as socialist, are all more economically free than the USA.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
Yes, it isn't logical at all that anyone should get nine slices of a ten slice pizza just because he inherited an obscene amount of wealth.
To answer your question: Supposing that you pay your fair share of taxes (which the top 0.1% in the USA are currently not doing), you can will your property to anyone you want. But I think there should be a cut-off for inheritances, as well as a cut-off for personal wealth in general. |
There would be less obscenely wealthy people if government were not controlled by big business in a corporatocracy.
Though I am curious, what would your "cut-off" be? |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29324
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 9:12 pm Post subject: |
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| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
There are no natural human rights. Nature doesn't grant or respect rights, it only equips people with certain abilities. You have the ability to create a tool and call it your property. A bigger, meaner guy than you has the ability to beat you into a twitching, whimpering pulp and take your supposed property away. That's nature for you.
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Have it your way. Rights are social conventions. Even so without access to possessions (the concrete precursor to so-called property rights) nothing would get done and nothing would be produced except for personal or family consumption. Civilization as we know it would be impossible. There must be secure possession of things worked for in order for civilization to exist. Even in a slave society the slave still had the clothes on his back and the food that he ate. So to get work out of a slave one must feed the slave.
ruveyn |
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CrazyCatLord
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 25, 2011
Posts: 2177
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:14 pm Post subject: |
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| Burzum wrote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
At that point, we will already have chopped down all rainforests |
No, because forests are replanted. Here's a chart of forest area in the USA over time. Notice how it isn't decreasing but remaining static despite the fact that 95-98% of forest area within the USA has been logged at least once. |
I was talking about rainforests. Rainforests are incredibly biodiverse and can't be replaced that easily. Not that anyone makes the effort to do so.
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: | | and blown most fossil fuel reserves into the air in form of CO2. |
We are never going to run out of fossil fuels. Why? Because as supply of fossil fuels decreases, the price increases and thus usage decreases, and you will eventually hit a point where it is simply too expensive to use fossil fuels as an energy source. We are never going to run out of an energy source either. We already know of alternative energy sources, they are just too expensive to use right now in comparison to fossil fuels. When the price of fossil fuels overtakes the alternative resources, we will naturally and gradually shift to using them instead of fossil fuels. |
So, why not shift to alternatives now if we have to do it anyway? I'm not really concerned about the depletion of fossil fuels. CO2 emissions and global climate change are much more pressing matters.
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: | | supposing that our planet still supports human life at all once CO2 levels have reached a tipping point and begin spiraling up by themselves |
Nonsense. Anyway, restricting the supply of fossil fuels would put countless numbers of people into poverty or worse. |
Not nonsense, science. There is a number of self-sustaining feedback mechanisms involved in global warming. First off, polar ice sheets reflect sunlight back into the atmosphere. The ice sheets are rapidly melting though, which means that less light is reflected, more heat is trapped, and the ocean heats up at a faster rate, which again speeds up the melting of the polar ice.
Higher ocean water temperatures will also release methane, a gas that only bonds to water molecules at low temperatures. There are huge methane plumes trapped under the polar ice that will eventually bubble to the surface and add to the greenhouse effect. Methane is a worse greenhouse gas than CO2.
In addition, the increased water temperature affects the North Atlantic conveyor belt, which transports both surface water and vast amounts of CO2 down to the bottom of the ocean. This phenomenon rids the atmosphere of approx. 2 gigatons of CO2 per year, but it depends on a certain water temperature and salinity. The salinity levels are currently slowly changing due to melting ice sheets in Greenland. Together with the rising temperature, this renders the CO2 absorption less effective.
But the oceans will be saturated with CO2 at some point anyway and simply can't absorb any more. When that happens, the share of our anthropogenic CO2 emissions that remains in the atmosphere will suddenly increase from 3 to 5 gigatons per year. And the warmer the water gets, the sooner the oceans will reach their saturation point.
It gets worse though. Soil respiration increases as well as the Earth heats up, which means that plants and microbes in the soil also release more CO2. At some point, trees can't cope with the increasingly fast climate change anymore and forests destabilize and die. Dead wood is more prone to forest fires, which will again release massive amounts of CO2 into the atmosphere. The loss of forests also means that less CO2 will be absorbed.
The death of marine phytoplankton will be equally devastating. Phytoplankton absorbs as much carbon dioxide as all land plants combined. But it depends on nutrients that float up from the bottom of the ocean, another natural mechanism that is very sensitive to temperature changes. As the ocean warms up, less nutrients float to the surface, phytoplankton rapidly dies off, much less CO2 is absorbed, and the rate of global warming increases even more.
There are other feedback mechanisms as well. I don't remember all of them. The point is that once a tipping point is reached, the greenhouse gas emissions will keep increasing even if we immediately stop burning fossil fuels. At the same time, the level of CO2 absorption by ocean water and plant life will drastically decrease. We could find ourselves in a worst case scenario much faster than previously thought.
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
That might be unavoidable in the long run. The world population has more than tripled in the last century. Can you imagine what happens if it so much as doubles within the next 50 years? |
Do you describe yourself as a liberal? Because making it illegal for people to have children is an authoritarian measure. |
I didn't say anything about making it illegal to have children. Social policy changes go a long way. So does better sex education. The number of unplanned teenage pregnancies is still frighteningly high. And of course we ought to do something about religions that preach against the use of contraception. We need to combat this idiotic meme, especially in the Third World, and undo the damage that the Catholic Church has done.
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I think the current socio-economic situation in the USA proves Mr. Friedman wrong. People have a high degree of freedom, but equality? Some are dying in the streets, whereas others own several ten billion dollar mansions and a private fleet of yachts. That is utterly obscene, imho. Freedom isn't worth anything if you lack the basic necessities of life. |
The USA is a corporatocracy. Countries such as Denmark, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which some people have the hide to describe as socialist, are all more economically free than the USA. |
Are they? They seem to do a much better job at regulating their banking system. They also have proper welfare and universal health care systems in place (not sure about New Zealand). Since when do Libertarians agree with "redistribution of wealth" and "forced health care"?
| Quote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
Yes, it isn't logical at all that anyone should get nine slices of a ten slice pizza just because he inherited an obscene amount of wealth.
To answer your question: Supposing that you pay your fair share of taxes (which the top 0.1% in the USA are currently not doing), you can will your property to anyone you want. But I think there should be a cut-off for inheritances, as well as a cut-off for personal wealth in general. |
There would be less obscenely wealthy people if government were not controlled by big business in a corporatocracy.
Though I am curious, what would your "cut-off" be? |
I haven't really thought about that yet. But I'm pretty sure that nobody needs to own several billion dollar in order to enjoy a life in luxury and excess. Half a billion should be more than enough, imho. |
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CrazyCatLord
Phoenix
Joined: Oct 25, 2011
Posts: 2177
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:20 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
There are no natural human rights. Nature doesn't grant or respect rights, it only equips people with certain abilities. You have the ability to create a tool and call it your property. A bigger, meaner guy than you has the ability to beat you into a twitching, whimpering pulp and take your supposed property away. That's nature for you.
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Have it your way. Rights are social conventions. Even so without access to possessions (the concrete precursor to so-called property rights) nothing would get done and nothing would be produced except for personal or family consumption. Civilization as we know it would be impossible. There must be secure possession of things worked for in order for civilization to exist. Even in a slave society the slave still had the clothes on his back and the food that he ate. So to get work out of a slave one must feed the slave.
ruveyn |
I don't want to abandon the concept of individual property. We simply need to ensure that public wealth is distributed a little more evenly and that labor is fairly compensated. Labor is property too. If workers are underpaid and wages don't keep up with inflation rates, companies steal property from their employees. |
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marshall
Under the whirlwind
Joined: Apr 15, 2007
Posts: 9223
Location: Western Michigan
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| Posted: Fri Feb 17, 2012 10:48 pm Post subject: |
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| Burzum wrote: |
Picture resized
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True old growth forest often takes at least 200 years to regrow. Throughout the world the truly magnificent old growth forests only exist in areas protected from logging by governments. If libertarians had their way all the coastal redwoods in California would probably be logged. |
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Burzum
Indeed
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1205
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:00 am Post subject: |
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| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I was talking about rainforests. Rainforests are incredibly biodiverse and can't be replaced that easily. Not that anyone makes the effort to do so. |
Who owns these rainforests that are being cut down?
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
So, why not shift to alternatives now if we have to do it anyway? I'm not really concerned about the depletion of fossil fuels. CO2 emissions and global climate change are much more pressing matters. |
Why do we need to right now? Alternatives are more expensive. There's simply no reason to forcibly make people use fuel sources other than fossil fuels at this moment.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
The point is that once a tipping point is reached, the greenhouse gas emissions will keep increasing even if we immediately stop burning fossil fuels. |
I would like to see a study showing that our use of fossil fuels will result in reaching this tipping point. When I said "nonsense", I was not talking about whether there was a tipping point or not. I was talking about humans being enough of a contributing factor.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I didn't say anything about making it illegal to have children. |
Yes you did:
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | Burzum wrote: | | As for living space, what do you suggest we do? Make having too many babies illegal? |
That might be unavoidable in the long run. |
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | Social policy changes go a long way. So does better sex education. The number of unplanned teenage pregnancies is still frighteningly high. And of course we ought to do something about religions that preach against the use of contraception. We need to combat this idiotic meme, especially in the Third World, and undo the damage that the Catholic Church has done. |
I'm not going to disagree with you there. But, do you think that government subsidizing irresponsible pregnancies is a contributing factor as well?
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | Quote: |
The USA is a corporatocracy. Countries such as Denmark, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which some people have the hide to describe as socialist, are all more economically free than the USA. |
Are they? |
Yes. http://www.heritage.org/index/default
Edit: My mistake, Denmark is no longer more free than America, but one rank below it. I was going off of memory, the 2010 scores ranked Denmark higher than the USA.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | They seem to do a much better job at regulating their banking system. |
Or they don't have GSE's guaranteeing a return on high risk loans.
| CrazyCatLord wrote: | | They also have proper welfare and universal health care systems in place (not sure about New Zealand). Since when do Libertarians agree with "redistribution of wealth" and "forced health care"? |
The USA now has forced health care due to Obamacare. The USA also has redistribution of wealth, $835 billion is spent on Medicare and Medicaid and $725 billion is spent on social security.
Last edited by Burzum on Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:27 am; edited 1 time in total |
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Burzum
Indeed
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1205
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 7:05 am Post subject: |
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| marshall wrote: | | If libertarians had their way all the coastal redwoods in California would probably be logged. |
Does government own the land that these redwoods are growing on? If so, then your assertion is false. |
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donnie_darko
Phoenix
Joined: Nov 27, 2009
Age: 23
Posts: 1794
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:34 am Post subject: |
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| Would I be a libertarian if I believed that a national/federal/regional government should be propped up by mostly autonomous communities? |
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ruveyn
Phoenix
Joined: Sep 22, 2008
Age: 76
Posts: 29324
Location: New Jersey
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 8:42 pm Post subject: |
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| CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I don't want to abandon the concept of individual property. We simply need to ensure that public wealth is distributed a little more evenly and that labor is fairly compensated. Labor is property too. If workers are underpaid and wages don't keep up with inflation rates, companies steal property from their employees. |
1. What is "fairly"? If a person voluntarily accepted a wage for services performed than the wage is fair.
2. Labor is action. It is not an object that can be transferred from one person to another.
ruveyn |
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Oodain
big chief wulla bamboom alakaway
Joined: Jan 31, 2011
Age: 23
Posts: 5022
Location: in my own little tamarillo jungle,
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:06 pm Post subject: |
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| ruveyn wrote: | | CrazyCatLord wrote: |
I don't want to abandon the concept of individual property. We simply need to ensure that public wealth is distributed a little more evenly and that labor is fairly compensated. Labor is property too. If workers are underpaid and wages don't keep up with inflation rates, companies steal property from their employees. |
1. What is "fairly"? If a person voluntarily accepted a wage for services performed than the wage is fair.
2. Labor is action. It is not an object that can be transferred from one person to another.
ruveyn |
only in an ideal system,
something the world is everything but.
thee are plenty of people that work for less than they need because they have no choice, yet whole industries are based on that work.
_________________
//through chaos comes complexity//
the scent of the tamarillo is pungent and powerfull,
woe be to the nose who nears it.
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marshall
Under the whirlwind
Joined: Apr 15, 2007
Posts: 9223
Location: Western Michigan
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:22 pm Post subject: |
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| Burzum wrote: | | marshall wrote: | | If libertarians had their way all the coastal redwoods in California would probably be logged. |
Does government own the land that these redwoods are growing on? If so, then your assertion is false. |
Whack-job libertarians would be against government owning anything, therefore it would be privately owned. The idea of national and state parks is a socialist one. |
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Burzum
Indeed
Joined: Apr 27, 2011
Posts: 1205
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| Posted: Sat Feb 18, 2012 9:27 pm Post subject: |
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| marshall wrote: |
Whack-job libertarians |
F**k off with your condescending bullshit.
| marshall wrote: | | therefore it would be privately owned |
And therefore the tragedy of the commons is avoided. |
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