[extropy-chat] Why I am No Longer a Libertarian Either...

[Peter Brooks]

This is a good start at explaining it. Then there is the high cost of litigation; citizens who hate everything about D.C. with a passion except the checks being funded from that location, and so forth. Notice how citizens want virtually unlimited growth on their terms yet also want a very clean environment-- which is not merely double-minded but also schizophrenic. It never ends. That is to say it developed in this country over the last 229 years, and might take another 229 years to change; unlikely but possible. I personally am 100% tired of hearing rosy scenarios for the near future, right now (and I go by the moment at hand) it is shaping up to be a mess this whole century, even excluding the costs of WWIII.


Sometimes bubbles happen when the market is lied to successfully and
crashes happen when the market discovers it has been lied to. Other
times, bubbles happen because technological improvements actually
create exponential growth, and crashes happen when major players who
see such growth as a threat take action to castrate it.

One day your widget plant is worth a billion dollars. Then the EPA says
your widgets are a public health hazard and bans them, and your plant
is worth zero, or less than zero due to salvage and cleanup costs. Both
values were entirely accurate at the time they were estimated by the
market. Or, lets say you are a wheat farmer with 1,000 acres of wheat
ready to harvest, but you dare not do so because the market value is
$.10 a bushel because everyone is expecting a bumper crop, and your
costs are $.20 a bushel. You are screwed and the bank is looking at
seizing your farm. The next day a freak blizzard rolls through the next
state and wipes out that states wheat crops. Suddenly the price of
wheat rises to $.40 a bushel and you are now a rich man. That is the
market. Few things are intrinsically valuable. Everything gets is value
based on what the market knows at that moment about the product, and
supply and demand.

> 
> > Claims that Bill Gates or Steve Ballmer isn't
> > worth what they
> > are paid, or Jobs, or any other highly paid CEO are
> > based on
> > puritanical protestant prejudices against
> > ostentatiousness and
> > inaccurate memes that claim that one man is worth
> > any other.
> 
> But the meme that "all men [and women of course] are
> created equal" is the foundation of democracy. If the
> meme is inaccurate then is democracy legitimate?
> Should it be changed to one vote for every dollar or
> one vote per acre of land rather than one vote for
> every person? 

No. Your conflation here is a sign of the problem. All men are created
equal in our individual rights. That does not mean we are all worth the
same. Some are more productive than others, some are smarter than
others, some are more precise or detail oriented, some have more
endurance, some are stronger, some are smaller. In commerce, smarts are
worth the most, the ability to sell, to manage and lead, to innovante
and engineer, to research and develop. Most of all the ability to
manage and lead all the other smarties, and through them a whole lot of
non-smarties in maximizing the ability of non-smarties to work
productively, is worth the most of all. In some cases it is worth an
incredible amount more.

Commercial inequality is an entirely separate characteristic of men
from political equality.

> 
> > Any economist can tell you that no two workers are
> > worth the same pay
> > for the same job, and there is no market rule
> > limiting CEO pay as a
> > proportion of avg worker pay. Workers at all levels
> > get paid what they
> > are worth, with few exceptions (typically when
> > government and unions
> > enforce non-market pay scales).
> 
> So you are saying the worth of a man is the size of
> his paycheck? By your logic, the American who makes
> shoes for $20.00/hour is worth more than the Chinese
> child that makes shoes for 20 cents/hour. So if the
> American worker is worth more than the Chinese worker,
> then why are these companies exchanging high value
> workers for less valuable ones? 

That isn't what I'm saying. The American who makes $20.00/hr is
valuable to himself and his dependents. To a business manager whose job
is maximizing shareholder value, a $20/hr cobbler is a $19.80/hr
diseconomy compared to the chinese child, if the product they both
produce is of substantial equivalence in terms of quality and value.

The work of an American cobbler is worth more than a chinese child to
many other Americans. The market decides how many of those believe it
is worth $19.80/hr more. If the business manager decides that only 10%
of their desired market share feel that way, then the cobbler goes and
the chinese kid is hired, unless the manager is smart, where he'll
produce niche products for that 10% with the cobbler, and mass produce
for everybody else with the chinese kid.

You are mixing up who is worth what to who.

> 
> > Says who? Some piece of paper? They stopped listening to that a
long
> > time ago, and only cite it today when it serves
> > their own benefit.
> 
> That's a ill-conceived stance for them to take because
> that scrap of paper is the only thing that gives them
> even the barest hint of legitimacy my eyes. 

To paraphrase Stalin, "How many divisions do you have?" (and more
importantly, are willing to use?) Rulers have nothing to fear from a
disarmed populace. The Constitution only has legitimacy if the people
are capable of enforcing it (and willing to do so) upon their rulers.

> 
> > Because all those who claim to be defenders of liberty either are
> > out to defend their own liberty at the expense of others, or are
too
> > chickenshit to recognise that the time for revolution has been here
> > for a while.
> 
> No, not yet. They have been too canny so far. Right
> now they are treating the American people like the
> proverbial frog in a classic biology experiment. If
> you throw a frog into boiling water, the frog
> immediately hops out. But if you put the frog into
> water at room temperature and then raise the water
> temperature slowly, one degree per minute for example,
> before long the frog is dead in boiling water and
> never realized what was happening. But I may be giving
> them too much credit. Sooner or later, I think they
> will become too cocky and make a mistake. 

Re-upping the Patriot Act right after the Kelo decision is a bit much.

> Something at least as atrocious as the Boston
> Massacre needs to occur in order to tear the masses
> away from watching Britney Spears shake her ass.
> Without something to rally the people around, you will
> just be labeled another nut case that went postal or
> worse, a terrorist. 

Ah, but such events in history never happen by accident. They are
always prepared and staged.

> 
> > As these five justices have given
> > us permission to take their homes, we intend to do
> > so, just as if they'd put their couch on the curb with a "free"
> > sign on it.
> >
> 
> As long as they are willing subject themselves to
> their own ruling, I don't see a tremendous problem
> with that. I would be curious to see their reaction to
> this ploy.

We'll have to see. I was just on NH Public Radio this morning to
announce we are now going after Justice Steven Breyers 167 acres in
Plainfield, NH. That is two SCOTUS justices with property in NH, both
of whom ruled for the majority opinion in Kelo v New London.

Those of you in California should look at a property or properties
owned in Sacramento by Justice Kennedy, while John Paul Stevens has
property in the Chicagoland area, and Ginsberg owns something in New
York.

Justices live in a world of judicial immunity, in which they have no
accountability to the people. This is the first time in American
history where the people themselves will be able to hold the justices
accountable for their actions.

Mike Lorrey
Vice-Chair, 2nd District, Libertarian Party of NH
"Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom.
It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves."
-William Pitt (1759-1806) 
Blog: http://intlib.blogspot.com



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