Generally, where do your economic views fall on the political spectrum?

posted 20-Oct-2000 6:36pm

Socialized income & benefits with a libertarian selection of mandatory employment.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 21-Oct-2000 1:14am

I don't quite understand your comment. Libertarian selection of mandatory employment... what do you mean?

posted 21-Oct-2000 3:02am

Where would Libertarian fall on that spectrum?

they

posted 21-Oct-2000 9:20am

bah.

(reply to LindaH) posted 21-Oct-2000 4:21pm

background: in backwoods, usa most jobs are related to survival; go to a place like LA where the millions reside and you'll find about 4/5 of the jobs are in security, law, entertainment, defense, and other jobs that have nothing to with production of food or shelter. My last architecture teacher told the class "if you plan on this as your career, you better hope for earthquakes". Both parents have to work because employment is not vital these days. Lower gov't employees get paid to play solitaire as 'mouse training'; The army buys $400 hammers; we couldn't survive in our current structure producing durable goods like stereos and cars that can last 30 years. We produce video games that will be obsolete in two years and release viruses that undo everyone's work. We promote people living two hours from work, and don't consider it urgent when major boulevards take 6 months to repair, or a bus strike affects 2 million employees for 32 days. We don't allow agencies to share resources for instance the police do not have any access to all the surveillance systems present in satellites, ATM machines, smoke detectors, etc. Doctors and social agencies generally require a fresh paper duplicate of your case history. The US failed at undoing its 'Rosie the riveter' campaign. (I appreciate the new gender equality, but would still rather see either one of the parents at home). In the 60`s we finally rebelled against living to produce the 32 button blender. But still, employment has shifted towards telemarketing. We sell all sorts of fictitious commodities i.e. 'futures', 'domain names' & 'keywords' To complicate things, what little labor was required is in the hand of international companies now, so not only your factory shoe-lace riveter, but even the person taking your order at the drive-thru burger joint may be overseas where the population density is several fold that of the US. A third of the people trying to sell me a different credit card are from trinidad or grenada. (Ask them where they're from next time, it's a great way to get weather reports too.) Our top presidential consultant on technology has proposed we stop teaching science, because it proposes a security risk (My 13 year old daughter learned about geological specimens with DNA & Proteins, my son's high school creates new life forms). There may be other factors involved such as slowing technology in general or stratifying society.

philosophy: Interests, skills, and aptitude, not economic desire and educational opportunity should be the determining factor in which vocation a person finds them self employed in. Personal pride, commitment to society (peers and global sustainment), and self-improvement should be their motivation to perform well. Employers should have the freedom to hire whom is most effective for their budget. That budget should be determined by how important society deems the project. Distribution of employment hours should be contingent upon supply and demand. A hardworking lawyer is not entitled to better health care or a more intimate access to swimming facilities than a hard working conscientious garbage truck driver, nursery school teacher, burger cook, or clock repairman. Our current course of capitalist competition is at best driving us towards 'brave new world', 'the time machine', and some of P.K. Dicks works in which the lower classes must consume x significant amount of goods weekly, while the leisure class can simply wear out a deck of cards.

proposal: A libertarian pool of contract employees on a fixed income whose hours are determined by the regional supply and demand of their currently chosen profession. In the case of parents or communes these 'labor units' may be divied up collectively. The survival needs of a nation would require less man hours than the economically competitive system, particularly when everyone's position was motivated solely by an interest in their work above what it formerly payed. Because of supply and demand, one's minimal labor units may be fulfilled by 16 hours a week as a librarian, or 4 hours a week as a garbage driver. Free time could become a motive in selecting a vocation. Employers would have a second tier of 'monopoly money' that determines whom they hire and for how long. All employers would be created by state venture capitalists distributing 'monopoly $' as determined by popular vote. If the public voted in favor of more video game production, the vc's would make awards to bidding entrepreneurs. That monopoly budget would in turn go to middle management contractors and out to staff pools. Staff would be chosen from a bidding database that contained complete histories of a person including timeliness, satisfaction of management, satisfaction of peers, and even whether they liked Betty-Boop. There would be much less outdoors types grumbling about their work in a Betty-Boop gift shop while meanwhile a golf caddy spends their breaks sketching pudgy and koko the clown. The history system could calibrate a persons value to a project and affect their monopoly bidding cost. If a project was urgent, you could outbid another employer for the persons services. The bidding, performance, and satisfaction histories however would only affect selection in assignments and their monopoly worth, not affect their physical income which is equal across the board. If the majority of society is content to flip burgers instead of improving their knowledge of astrophysics, then burger-flipping is what they should be doing with a smile on their face. Because of supply and demand labor unit allotment, if their were a shortage of burger chefs, there would be the inducement of shorter work weeks. Education would be simply an extension of this system. It would be treated as another vocation. Independent contractors would again bid on placement in advanced astrophysics classes. If because of a poor performance history, they are not selected, perhaps they can bid to be placed in classes on road repair (classes that appeared in response to popular vote) or may have to fulfill there labor units elsewhere, perhaps even as vocational or psychiatric counselee.
With all the free time generated, people could build their histories with local volunteer work in theater, parks maintenance, or after-school care, although these volunteer efforts would likely become local pop-vote labor-unit distributors. Another way to spend their time is through the popular vote commission. Concentric voting would occur weekly ranging from deciding which plants are selected for your nearby boulevard islands to whether or not to allow cloning in international wildlife refuges, kenya, madagascar, and java. With their 7 hours of monthly vote participation, depending upon their expertise, they could assist in decisions on selection of soap-opera scripts, or distribution of waste-water reclamation research contracts.
With these guidelines society would become far more dynamic and responsive to global self-sustainment needs. No one would have cause to grumble except those whos pride requires having more material worth than others.

(reply to Frostbrand) posted 21-Oct-2000 4:30pm

Libertarianism, in spite of it's name sounding left-wing, is a far-right or ultra-conservative philosophy. Although in theory many of it's adherents hope it would promote a voluntary social equalisation, it's implementation is far remote from anything of the sort. It's liberal only in that it promotes the freedom of the individual at the implicit exclusion of collective interests.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 21-Oct-2000 11:54pm

Are you sure? Cause according to SpeakOut.com's political spectrum test, I'm a Moderate libertarian liberal. And that description does not fit what you just said.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 22-Oct-2000 2:30am

It takes me a bit of thinking to figure out all the complexities, but as for your philosophy there's one thing that stood out...

Personal pride, commitment to society (peers and global sustainment), and self-improvement should be their motivation to perform well.

It bothers me, the thought that anyone would establish "shoulds" when it comes to other people's motivations. So, what of the people who wish for more material possessions and/or a more leisurely lifestyle? I think everyone can be just as deserving of the finer things in life, and more power to those who try harder to get it, because they want it more. My philosophy: If everyone has their basic needs met, there's absolutely nothing wrong with some people having extras. The only cause for people to grumble in that scenario is jealousy.

(reply to LindaH) posted 22-Oct-2000 7:11am

I suppose even self-improvement could be considered a form of lust or greed, but at least it is not a form that infringes on access to the same by others. My system promotes helping others rather than helping one's self, though they both go hand in hand, much as they do now. My primary concern is that people should be doing what they love most, and there should be equal access to leisure and material. We need burger flippers, and we need astro-physicists. It's not trying harder which separates those two professions. It's education and aptitude. I imagine there are many burger flippers who would rather have the wealth and leisure of astro-physicists, and a majority of astro-physicists who would have gone the same route even if all jobs paid the same. As the system stands now, it is discrimination based on ability, opportunity, knowledge, education, aptitude, interest, and simply the good fortune of having whatever combination of those that pays the most at the moment. The jobs that pay the most are professions like my own, computer programming, where every hour I work puts 1200 other man hours out of commission through the software I create. It pays me well, it's obvious why employers pay more for that than burger flipping, but it hasn't served society one iota. It has only served to necessitate a system like I devised before everything including customer service is totally automated. I used to think "well, at least I'll always have a job, designing programmers tools if nothing else, living at the top of the production chain", but now I concentrate on teaching spirituality, something I hope the machines will never replace, though I had big plans to automate even that through software. (My computer is psychic and can add forgotten material to my journal entries and intersperse topics of contemplation). Now I'm shifting towards drawing the Simpson's comic, which will also pay well without harming the social economy. If I had been able to patent and sell all the hundreds of inventions I devised that eventually came out on the market, I would have been a multi-billionaire by now. But that is a delight that comes to me as easy as dreaming, not like the grueling work of flipping burgers which I think, if personal effort were the yardstick, should pay several fold that. I've been in this argument too many times;
You tell me what should be fair determination of a person's wages, and don't give me a reply as meaningless as "hard work". I've invented a hundred fold of what Bill Gates has invented. I make $4/hr and he makes $1,000,000/hr (as was his childhood goal). In spite of the good he has created, I consider his tactics loathsome. He has a knack for "winning the game", which is far different than being motivated to making a social contribution. If it weren't for the fact that the people at the top know their power is dependent upon sustainment of the masses they exploit, their thinking would cause society to crumble. And not everyone in their position is so far thinking. When fish production from netting the gulf streams diminished, they built finer mesh nets. They didn't care that demarcated the diminishing of sustainable production of species. They wanted their money now at the expense of all life 20 years from now, and I'm sure they were paid well. Personally, I think the Amish are the only sane society left on this planet. No one else has a system that assures our survival short of building a DNA library and terra-forming other planets. 2000 years ago effort was proportional to success. We didn't live in a world of fictitious negotiations and commodities whose value might change ten fold overnight. My neighbors often work double shifts as security guards (an occupation I'm disappointed to have exist), and I still hear some mornings where they steal oatmeal from each other's plates. I have plenty of things I want including a fixer-upper house, a car, and flights to see my children, other than that, I can't complain. Except for the kids and my back going out, I suppose I can't complain at all for the moment. I'm hoping I'll pass this test for the Simpson's job and be able to procure those things, but I would blame providence, not hard work for it. I'm sure there are thousands of equally qualified artists who just didn't have a member of the Simsons staff as a next-door neighbor. (though admittedly this is why I moved to Hollywood, and the other 1000's of artists arguably didn't move here to find such opportunities). I wouldn't even be here if spirit hadn't told me where to go, and lined up all the arrangements. By that reasoning, I can't complain about where anyone finds themselves. They all had an equal chance to find God and be shown the way best for them. None the less we still live in a planned society, and I think we should try to make it one that offers equal opportunity and plans for self-sustainment.
Perhaps your experience is different than mine, in the extremely varying professions I have been in (blue collar, white collar, and artistic) and amongst the dozens of close coworkers I spent time with, I have never once seen an example of pay being proportional to effort, though it has coincided a little with knack and performance. To my dismay, it almost always seems proportional to people skills, usually of the ruthless but tactful variety. Those who merely plug away at their work tend to go unnoticed. Some professions, no matter how important (we need to eat, kids need taught) will never offer the same wages as where the market's hot no matter how hard people apply themselves. I see little justice at all at who gets paid well in the big picture of society, though I do see the paying strategies of capitalist employers.

bill

posted 22-Oct-2000 7:56am

fiscally conservative, socially liberal

phi

posted 22-Oct-2000 10:46am

I have a set of views which seem to go perfectly hand in hand to me but which seem to other people to be all over the political spectrum.

Jeanne

posted 22-Oct-2000 10:59am

Right - Conservative

Analog

(reply to Frostbrand) posted 22-Oct-2000 12:16pm

Libertarians tend to agree with the ``right wing conservatives'' on most economic issues, because the conservatives tend to prefer to have the government keep its hands out of commerce, and the Libertarians prefer the government keep its hands out of everything. I'd say on economics the Libertarian ``party line'' is far-right.

dab

posted 22-Oct-2000 3:59pm

I think most would consider me fairly extreme in my political views on economic issues (I just think I'm rational about it) but far right suggests Buchanan and his isolationist policies which is hardly what I believe and far left is big government which is even less what I want.

(reply to Analog) posted 22-Oct-2000 6:17pm

Well in that case, I guess I really am a Libertarian.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 22-Oct-2000 7:36pm

I don't think there should be "fairness" in wages. All I see a need for is that everyone gets a livable wage. If someone down the road is willing to pay me $11.00/hr for the same job my neighbor is doing for somone else for $6.00/hour, it's not a wrong that needs to be righted. If everyone is eating, learning well, sleeping in a warm house and whatnot, then where is the injustice?

(reply to LindaH) posted 22-Oct-2000 7:40pm

When you get down to it, Capitalism is not at all that different from Feudalism. And Fuedalism sucked.

(reply to Frostbrand) posted 22-Oct-2000 8:28pm

So, what do you think a perfect system would be? Do you think it's possible to have some socialism, with a little capitalism mixed in, so that everyone could have what they need, but some people who wanted to could attain more? Would there be anything wrong with a system like that?

(reply to LindaH) posted 22-Oct-2000 9:02pm

By some measuruments, 40% of america does not make a living wage. Grade school education has a 20 fold discrepancy observing from the children I've worked with. Would you consistently give one of your children twice the birthday and christmas presents without cause, and not expect them to be confused or jealous? In most respects I have been clever enough to circumvent the system. An incredible number of people are raised with ignorance. In my eyes, the current system is almost identical to the caste system of india, or the caste system in 'brave new world'. I live south of the 10 in LA. Social researchers know full well that it is rare that anyone raised here will make it into the affluence that exists north of the 10. Personally, I would like to see a population a tenth of what is now in which everyone was a prosperous home owner with a decent education. It's possible, but not since the 30's have people made an effort to make that happen. Then it was by building the country, now such a plan would have to be by rebuilding the country, but our physical resources are now limited, and our pioneering determinism has been undermined by three generations of industrialisation, automation, a limited demand for advancement in the physical sciences knowledge & engineering thinking, and a need to even exploit labor. Now that we have basically automated ourselves out of a true need for professional development, we need to evolve a societal belief system to match. I would like to see much more grandeur of life than is likely in a world in which people live in their boxes with a TV and their greatest demands are ordering their groceries on the internet. The injustice is that the evolution of society has deprived the individual of needing to make more than a contribution of attitude.
I would like to see those people south of the ten have the same prospects for purpose and attainment as those north. My highschool english teacher pointed out 20 years ago that the american dream was no longer going to be in reach of the average person (so he suggested we get into real estate) and as a consequence societies attitudes would have to change. It seems to me to have happened in a general loss of reverance for life, education, career, child-raising, life support, criminal rehabilitation, etc. People need a reason to value life, and the future we create for our progenitor is failing now as a viable inspiration. For centuries we felt we were building utopias, now it's more "what's the point" and "I won't be around to see it's demise". My generations gift to the future was virtual reality. I'm sure it's created a bit of that "what's the point" thinking. That, in combination with modern nano-technology leads me to suspect that virtual physicality will be the next generations gift. A reality in which there are no distinctions between the formation of matter and the distribution of thought and perception. We will become the clay and our children will be Adam and Eve who will forget the world is sentient.
Really, I expect my own social-utopia-reconstructionism to be quite obsoleted by recombinant deconstructionism. I bring it up only to promote a brief sense of compassion in the meantime.
Besides, I'm actually thankful that we've created all of our moguls like the Maharajahs, Huntington, Hearst, Hughes, Gates. It's made life interesting. Bill Gates is actually making society tick by allowing us to print money out of nothing, create disposable work efforts, and send the money back to him where he locks it away or spends great amounts on rare art. If he were to actually spend his fortune at the consumer goods level, he would instead be screwing things up royally for the rest of us. Reality always has a tendency to work, to create it's own checks and balances.

(reply to Frostbrand) posted 22-Oct-2000 9:25pm

Excellent point; on the other hand Feudalism was essentially leninism-marxism, and could also be seen as wonderful way of life in which people worked collectively, land plots were rotated, everyone had their personal goat and sheep, a reserve of commodities was present for times of individual or collective strife. The king himself gathereed wealth of no consequence such as gold and jewels, and invested in the arts and sciences. It wasn't until they took to exporting their GNP that true exploitation of the masses occurred. The dark ages weren't as dark as the great thinkers of the rennaissance and age of reformation would have you believe. Rome went to far when it built aqueducts. The plague didn't occur till people travelled widely and made dense urban congregations. If everyone lived off of their own land without industrialization, we wouldn't have global warming now. The notion of mercantilism, that everyone can aspire to great wealth in conjunction with the obliviousness that our planet is in fact a small world with limited resources, is responsible for the stratification of wealth and the draining of resources we now endure.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 22-Oct-2000 10:52pm

40%? Are they living in poverty? Do they live in substandard conditions? I certianly hope not. That's a pretty high percentage. In America, we have food stamps, energy assistance. medical assistance (and sliding fee clinics) cheap clothes, all kinds of programs for people in poverty. It's a shame anyone has to be in the position to use those services, but I find it hard to believe the notion that it's the fault of employers who don't pay enough, or the fault of people who make too much and don't give it away.

As for the Christmas present analogy. Of course one kid would be jealous and confused. But parents handing out gifts to their families are totally different than societies economic dynamics. It's unfair for a parent to give one kid more toys. It's not unfair for some people to make more money than other people.

cody

posted 22-Oct-2000 11:23pm

Ultra right wing: Libertarian.

Zang

posted 23-Oct-2000 12:09am

See Karl Marx and Mao Tse Tung over there? That's me standing just to the left of them, smiling and waving!

(Lock up your daughters!)

(reply to LindaH) posted 23-Oct-2000 3:05am

That is to the left

supplicant

(reply to Zang) posted 23-Oct-2000 9:17am

North79

posted 23-Oct-2000 9:51am

I'm fiscally very right wing..socially also, but less so.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 23-Oct-2000 11:32pm

What is to the left? Social programs? I know.

posted 24-Oct-2000 5:20am

Centre-right. I hate political correctness. I think it's gone way too far. I believe people should be accepted on who they are, not by what colour or sex they are. My experience with left wingers shows that they demonstrate all the things they oppose - racism, sexism, classism etc, only they are racist to white people, sexist to men etc. They also demonstrate how racist and sexist they are by over compensating for the race or the sex of the person they are addressing. People with centre or centre-right views tend to treat people equally, rather than making special accommodating measures based on someones race. I think the left wing, are much more racist and sexist than they pretend the centre-right are. I also dislike the absolute hypocrisy of left wing greenies who live in rich first world countries. They partake of all the benefits of a capitalist society, yet they try to prevent poor countries from improving their lives by using the world's resources. They criticize nuclear power, fossil fuel use and mining while they use products and services that these things provide.

natsim

(reply to kaleb777) posted 24-Oct-2000 4:31pm

The question asked about economic views....

(reply to natsim) posted 24-Oct-2000 4:45pm

I don't like left wing economics. I think my points about the left over compensating for the race or the sex of the person includes economics, and the belief that some people can only make it in a capitalist society with special help.

(reply to kaleb777) posted 25-Oct-2000 2:48am

You're probably one of the few who can understand my position on prejudism. I think all the anti-racist propoganda from my childhood was worse than if the subject had never been brought up. If all that effort hadn't been spent trying to convince us that these people are no different, than maybe the idea wouldn't have occurred to me. I don't like having that flash a thought that someone is too different. I think it was taught to me by people who were well intended trying to correct the problem. Don't get me wrong. I am annoyed at how poorly the media has made corrections. Violent flunkies and sinister characters are still the roles primarily assigned to minority races.

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 25-Oct-2000 3:23am

I also wonder how those so-called "minority" people feel as the left wing discuss how things can be modified to make it easier for them to "make it" in a western economy. I believe the only "help" they need (if that's the word) is to be given the same chance as the majority.

posted 25-Oct-2000 4:06am

The successful black people I've met don't consider themself black. Now I don't consider myself white in terms of my success either, but when it suits me, I'm proud of being Irish and German. I never see white people call each other white trash, but I constantly see black people call each other nigger. The US media never shows the existence of places like nigeria which has a modern technical land of business skyscrapers predominantly black.

daver

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 25-Oct-2000 7:00am

It's like those little silica gel packets: if they didn't say "Do Not Eat", I don't think it would have occurred to many people to eat them.

natsim

(reply to kaleb777) posted 25-Oct-2000 9:07am

Okay, that makes sense now. I take it you also disagree with free public schools/universities, free health care and unemployment or disability benefits then?

North79

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 25-Oct-2000 9:33am

I never knew what racism was until I started getting bombarded with anti-racism propaganda!

(reply to natsim) posted 25-Oct-2000 3:22pm

I think people who can pay should. I'm not opposed to all aid, as long as there is a real need. It's no good morally or economically to fail to educate people because they can't afford it. There's a big stink happening here in Australia at the moment about the Federal Government giving more money to 'private schools' than they give to public schools. I don't disagree with any public funding, as long as those who get it really need it, and get the same as everyone else.

jzp

posted 28-Oct-2000 7:19pm

no option for anarchists; you presume teh inevitability and accuracy of "the" political spectrum.

Dave

posted 1-Nov-2000 12:36pm

Defining "Left" as socialist would make "Right" something closer to anarchy, which is fairly close to my stand. I'm primarily libertarian.

Kabit

posted 1-Nov-2000 9:43pm

A British survey, perhaps? I catagorize myself as a freeman/no-party (i.e. uncatagorizable), but I lean toward liberal I suppose. I'm voting for Gore (Education and Environment are important to me).

gdrago23

posted 5-Nov-2000 11:28pm

I think that I should own my own stuff... I think I should be free to enter into contracts with other consenting adults... And I think I'm the only person who has any right to the products of my labor. What does this make me?

gdrago23

posted 5-Nov-2000 11:37pm

Why does libertarianism come off as right-wing? I don't feel obligated to help someone else... it's certainly very nice of me, but I've been some terrible pieces of infectious human waste who I wouldn't piss out if they were on fire...

To imply that all people are equally deserving of the same standard of living is ludicrous. I'm not right-wing: I don't think we should use the military as a tool of foreign policy, I'm *very* opposed to drug prohibition, though I think you're an bleedin' idiot if you touch most of that stuff, I don't think we need religion *anywhere* (I'm agnostic), and I'm not even wealthy.

Frankly, socialism gives me the crawling horrors. I shudder at the idea of a society ruled from above For My Own Good. I can't countenance the idea that someone else knows what's best for me and for everyone else, and they'd better take my money and spend it because I'd just waste it in any case.

(reply to gdrago23) posted 6-Nov-2000 12:34am

As a person you save for a rainy day. As a family you might save for your childrens college or rescue your spouse in an emergency. As a collective you acquire housing and transportation. Likewise a nation is a family that handles disputes, apportions savings for disastor relief, builds water resevoirs, makes sure the population doesn't grow up uneducated etc. Even with a populist vote over the internet, you couldn't have the people govern these tasks without representatives, so we elect them instead and anyone is free to become one.
True, there are alternatives. We could go back to stone age agrarian life, or let ungoverned monopolies control everything from phone to police service. Individuals would have to show their monthly police service bill had been paid if they want officers to chase a rapist. Unless you want either of those options, you are a socialist to some extent, and the question becomes to what degree and how it is administrated.
Is the extent to which you wouldn't give a piss proportional to a person's paycheck? If you lost your job would you sacrifice all access to protective services, legal recourse, libraries, freeway & street privelages, toilets, modern medical technology, etc. etc.? We have 40 million people in the LA,CA area. I assure you there isn't the land to have them homestead, and without anti-trust controls, a single petroleum company would be charging quadruple for gas while leaving coasts covered in oil, strippng the landscape, and putting wells wherever it wanted.

dab

(reply to gdrago23) posted 6-Nov-2000 12:08pm

Liberals concentrate on the economic policies of libertarians and declare that it's right-wing. Conservatives see the social policies of libertarians as absurdly liberal. Libertarians see both the right and left as wanting larger, more powerful, and therefore more dangerous government.

If you hear someone claiming that libertarians are right-wing, then you know they're paying most attention to the economics. You can make a good guess that they think the government should be heavily involved in the economy.

gdrago23

(reply to Kristal_Rose) posted 6-Nov-2000 12:15pm

You may talk about the terrible consequences of extreme libertarianism, but let's come back to earth for a moment.

Let's see... you haven't responded to a single one of my points! You've just pasted in a canned rant against libertarianism. What about any one of the issues I've raised?

Did people really starve and die in the streets before Social Security? (Prior to the Great Depression, that is.) I just can't believe that we need all the government we have.

Sorry if this comes off as flaming. It's just that the only indication you read more than one word of my post was your usage of 'give a piss'.

posted 6-Nov-2000 11:47pm

I have never rants against libertarianism, I composed this myself for your sake. I felt I was addressing your entire rant, because it seemed to be written in the subjective expressing a philosophy about interrelations. I addressed it by countering with my philosophy of interrelationships, and I feel, illustrated my position with a lot more tangible points than the zero concrete examples you provided.
Just after the crash we had the hoovervilles of the great depression, which were alleviated by my favorite policies of F.D.Roosevelt such as establishing the WPA. If that had kept up, we probably would have single income families working half the hours with a great deal of development of local swimming lounges, community theaters, etc. Instead we have created a paranoid competitive capitalist society that fritters it's resources on security guards, video game production, law suits, etc.
I was a libertarian when I was young, though it was anideal to reach, and in the meantime I had no qualms about the taxes I paid to things like Social Security. I'm thankful for that, otherwise I would have been a hypocrite, now that I am dependant upon disability. Also, even before that juncture, I came to realise that what little career I had was the benefit of free libraries and higher education. I have AA's in computer science and studio arts, plus a lot more units, though I was never able to afford attendance at a four year. Libertarianism is total unregulated capitalism; It is like a monopoly game; The rules almost ensure that some people will lose and others will win. When I was a libertarian, I used to think much higher of societies generosity. Now I find that it is quite unlikely that people would fund vital community services like education and fire services by volunteer contributions.
Talk of agnosticism and prohibition seemed a bit off the topic. I just voted for prop 36 since I don't believe in drug criminalisation. I'm a new-age minister. I have no idea what you may be implying about religion in a political context, but I might agree with you.
It came off as flaming before I responded the first time. I doesn't appear to me that you've addressed any points I've made either.
The crux of that would be these questions for you: Do you see families as needing to operate as a collaborative entity? Do you see the community or globe as an extended form of family? Do you believe in equal access to services such as the judicial system or education. Do you believe a libertarian system can provide this.
My expectation of your belief system is that it is 'survival of the fittest' thinking, which I feel would only serve society if we were equally gifted and all equally greedy as the most greedy amongst us. With each consecutive generation a fully competitive system would still fall apart because education and opportunity would be contingent upon the prior success of one's parents.
I believe that the welfare of society is more important than the welfare of the individual. Society should create as best an environment for it's constituents as possible, but it is society, not individuals who will need to prosper through the generations. I believe libertarianism would ultimately lead to company towns escalating into feudal states. Companies would take the most from and give the least to their employees unless we could somehow prevent companies from dominating the market.
I don't think highly of cockroaches. Mommy roaches churn out lots of tykes whom all feast well when things are good, when times are tight mommy eats the fat little ginger kids knowing with her mass she can keep churning them out till times prosper. I think of capitalist employers in much the same vein.
I actually employ a lot of libertarianism in my socialist labor contracting manifesto at the beginning of this survey. Have you read it?
Operating solely for yourself on the fruits of your own labors is only possible out in the wild, not in society. Roads, buildings, delivery of produce all require that all the parties involved were operating for mutual beneefit.
By the way, the most tangible thing you did seem to say involved consenting adults making contracts. What did that have to do with anything. Only in total anarchy or total totalitarianism would that disappear.

phi

(reply to gdrago23) posted 7-Nov-2000 4:33pm

Did people really starve and die in the streets before Social Security?

no, they starved and died locked in mill buildings, with their teeth filed down so they couldn't eat meat. If you really think most people were better off in the time that Marx and Engels were writing than they are now that the industrialized world has adopted many of the ideas of communism, you have another think coming.

What amuses me is how many Marxists fail to realize that the time of thesis and antithesis on this issue is a hundred years past and we are living in the synthesis.

Maarten

posted 7-Nov-2000 6:48pm

posted 7-Nov-2000 10:42pm

It's not lost on me. We live in a facade of right wing conservatism. And hopefully new thesis keep arriving.

bevbernard

posted 11-Nov-2000 12:15pm

geez everyone writes books in here

morgdavid

posted 11-Nov-2000 1:08pm

I am a libertarian. A pox on all their houses!!!

Jemmy

(reply to Maarten) posted 12-Nov-2000 12:33pm

What's that?

TheBlackAdder

posted 19-Nov-2000 4:29am

We ALL need lots of guns!! I've got 3. Guns are the building blocks of freedom. Freedom starts when you shoot that monkey on your back called Big Brother or Uncle Sam.

posted 19-Nov-2000 7:32am

That's pure nuts dude. Maybe once that made sense (1969 at the latest), but now that surveillance monitors our every word and sattelites can pick off any one of us, it's absurd to think that sniping innocent fools in some state militia from your basement is good for much. That kind of thinking makes you a prime candidate for expension in some foreign jungle. The monster we made is a fine caretaker. If it hadn't intervened, we'd be dead. You can still buy a 99� hamburger. Bill Gates could have bought everyones apartment and quadrupled the rents. The real uncle sam is made possible by stock investors. Watch Charlie Rose; he interviews the people who run our planet (and sports pros). They're decent people. Sustaining 6 billion people is not an easy task, and certainly not achieved by waving guns around. We're in an age where power is determined by media capture. Economics is old hat. Read 1984, the last frontier is public opinion.
Wait till your bible selection is controlled by a monopoly on the internet. If you want freedom of the sort you're talking about, you're going to have to eliminate every person who has any authority, capitalist or otherwise over another person. Be glad that by cosmic evolution, those in charge keep us at a complacent level of comfort.

Maarten

(reply to TheBlackAdder) posted 19-Nov-2000 8:23am

And you are studying to become a minister...

supplicant

(reply to TheBlackAdder) posted 19-Nov-2000 10:09am

I'd watch out for mandy if you're going to go around advocating the murder of Monkeys

mandy

(reply to TheBlackAdder) posted 19-Nov-2000 4:35pm

*Saunters in, spurs a jinglin'*

No one shoots Monkeeeees in my town, little man!!!!!

*Draws her gun*
*shoots you dead*
AH!...That felt goooood!