The Politics Thread (PLAY NICELY!)

It's overrated to you. Not to the millions of football fans around the world who feed the machine out of their own free will. They enjoy the game more than the cost and time they put into it. You want to go convince them they should go back badminton instead or something, be my guest.

Just like how some people like peanut butter and jelly sandwiches but other people don't

This is why free markets need to rule where people are at liberty to make their own choices about what they do with their life and body. Not tyrannical governments headed by an almighty gorbles.

Your view of governments seems to be inherently negative. Yes they make mistakes, but so does the free market. Many of the nations you list as "good examples of free market success" actually do have some social security services provided by the government. You don't need to go 100% free market to get free market advantages and I still wager that if you go 100% free market you'll see that that actually creates problems that don't solve themselves.

Nah, i'm only responding within the context of the discussion of footballers being paid too much. Hence the adjective infront of government.

Government is a monopoly on force - that is all it is. I don't mean to make a sweeping statement that government is inherently negative. A baseball bat can be negative when used in the wrong way like breaking into someone's home and forcing them to drink a liter of vinegar. Or it can be positive when used in the right way like in self defense against the guy trying to make you drink a liter of vinegar.

Libertarianism is great because it has two pillars. The first is a peacenik moral philosophy that says no-one should be coerced to do something they don't want to. We don't necessarily care how much better off people will or will not be in terms of material wealth. I would rather be a poor freeman than a rich slave. Fundamentally, what people choose to do with their freedom is a non-issue insofar as it abides by the non-aggression principle. The role of violence is to allow that space to exist by defending it against other violent actors seeking to disrupt it.

The other economic pillar is almost by miraculous coincidence. That if you respect the liberty of the individual, out of that flowers the most powerful and efficient engine of wealth creation known to date. There are many higher level theories about why that is. The one that sits with me the most is simply that parallel processing by many many individuals all seeking out their own self interest is faster at producing value for those individuals than a single threaded master processor. Doesn't matter how smart, fast, or well meaning that master processor is, it can never beat 7 billion working in parallel.

It's a (genuinely) wondrous, almost communist principle (lowercase 'c', referring to the actual theory, before anyone takes it as an accusation), to assume that seven billion people working in parallel can produce something better.

But that discounts, just like Communism (capital 'c', the ideology and / or outregime regime in certain countries), the reality of having to have people in charge of certain bottlenecks in order to keep the machine of seven billion people running. It's definitely (genuinely, I can't stress this enough) a fascinating argument, and one I have a bit of knowledge of, but given that I can't add 1 and 1 together, my humble opinions might be wasted on you.

Tip for the future: just because someone disagrees with your glorious economic theories, it doesn't make that person a) stupid or b) wrong.

If you were to be fair on cop-outs, at least quote the one that is openly-dismissive towards a person.

I've mentioned the tautology angle before. I included a lot more observations in the post you just selectively-quoted. I explained why it was a tautology before actually calling it one. The point of it being prone to collapse is obvious - you cannot have an inherently-free market that is just and fair when the existence of football as a media-supported sport sustains itself at the highest levels through corruption. The free market, insofar as that it exists, should not be propped-up by the existence of "what footballers are paid".

Next time, please respond to the entire post, and honestly I don't know whether this is a moderator note or not. It's awkward because I know exactly what argument you're inclined to prefer, and this would indicate bias in this instance. I don't want to overstep any boundaries.

what? so the ALL-KNOWING PERVASIVE ALL-POWERFUL and ALL-SOLVING capitalism combined with free market is ubiquitous except when it's not?


dude your entire argumentative technique is literally : "no I don't want that darn fact I say it doesn't apply and I don't justify why".

this thread realy makes we wonder what a govermeant should be even good for ... let's handle everything by companies because what else is a private school if not its own company for education ...

and no it's not about making peoples live easy and la dolce vita but give each the minimum neccesary to be able to sustain himself and a family eventualy .. meaning everyone having access to education, access to a fair work with fair income, a fair livingplace and finaly security ... otherwise why pay taxes if we can't expect some gain or service from the goverment ... what is the point in a goverment ... what is a society?
what is a state or a country if not a mere piece of ground ... who does it belong to ? what am i as a citizen to a state, the goverment or society?

Spoiler: obviously referring to this :

this.







THIS.
THIS .
THIS.



the level of flat out dishonesty toward oneself in this thread is just....


You know it's fuckin ALLOWED to self-criticize and relativize when trying to "be right on the internet" I for example have done it in plenty-a-thread this one included.

if you want your argument to get through the least bit you're going to have to be at least somewhat relatable.

this is just getting to be "making teams" attacking the person/team for the person/team not even for the ideas expressed.

this is DUMB and none of us here aren't above this. let's stop this.

A 7 billion player FFA is still an FFA. People in a free market work against each other, not with each other. Sure working together can in many circumstances be of benefit, but only within limits.
I don't doubt that if your only looking at productivity you'll probably see very high output rates the more free a market is. But the believe that a "pure" free market will also be a socially acceptable one is one I don't share. You don't get 7 billion winners when you play a 7 billion player FFA.

There are too many examples of the rich building castles while the poor starve next door for me to believe that charity would possibly be enough to play the role of a government that provides care for those who are poor and steps in to prevent the free market from becoming a very ugly corrupt monster.

The need to pay for my own life alone pushes me to do things I'd rather not do.
And the less money and education you have at the start the more it pushes you around. Isn't that coercion you should consider problematic as well?

Right? "Nobody is persecuting or coercing anyone else". Well, starving to death, out in the elements of the weather, homeless, is a pretty powerful motivation. If you boil it down, that's pretty much everyone's motivation, except the gap of threat is much greater to someone who's already pretty rich or established. Just like anyone who's hit bankruptcy and fallen on hard times from the top, everyone has the danger of losing everything, and that's pretty much what keeps Hillary Clinton clothed in italian fashion with a huge multi-million dollar "foundation" of personally-chosen "charity" donations. The deeper in cash you stay, the more comfortably farther away from starving to death on the side of the street you stay, even if staying deeply so means that someone else actually has to suffer that fate.

Otherwise, we'd probably be able to end world hunger, considering we throw away and discard 40% of the world's food production, and a LOT of people aren't eating just a "ration" of food...

That's a common fallacy, supply and demand is not a gladiator match. But don't take my word for it. Let's do some honest analysis.

When you go out there in the world, do you seek to destroy the lives of other people or do you seek to better your own?

a.
If someone goes to destroy the lives of others because they aren't rationally self interested, do you think the other party will agree to be trampled upon?

b.
How do you make your own life better if you cannot force anyone to do anything against their will? If both of us are pursuing our own interest, we must by necessity co-operate on terms agreeable to both of us. This pitting you keep talking about with winners and losers is asinine. This isn't working against each other, it's trying to find terms by which we both agree to work together. If someone can't co-operate on terms acceptable to another person, he hasn't 'lost' in some game - he merely failed to co-operate on the terms he was seeking to.

Are you suggesting we force everyone to co-operate with him and his unfair terms against their will? So if that guy says i must hire him at $1million per hour, I am not allowed to refuse on the basis that those terms are disadvantageous to me? And before you say 1 million is unrealistic, this is a matter of principle. Terms are either favourable or they are not.

Also just to save us some time going back and forth, let's not start this thing about "but the people are forced to do x or y to survive". We are all forced to do things to survive and it's not because of anyone coercing anyone. One can dig a well, grow their own food, make their own house.

How can you say that because person A is hungry, person B who works hard to prevent himself going hungry by growing food is now directly responsible for forcing Person A to be hungry(??). Person A through his own action has inflated his own value of food. Person B did nothing to make him hungry in the first place. And guess what, Person A is protected by Person C through Z who keep market prices honest by preventing single buyer markets.

This ffa concept is just ridiculous the more I think about it. How can you justify central power forcing inefficient and inhumane win/lose transactions that don't build any wealth whatsoever while punishing and discouraging win/win relationships. No wonder East and West Germany were so starkly different - couldn't have asked for a better science experiment.

I don't think you know what communism is bro. There's like this god at the top called Stalin right, and he knows better than everyone else what they should do or want. If you disagree with him, you get sent to a 'work camp' at the point of a gun so that you may see the truth and the light. But don't worry, it's for your own good.

That's pretty different from 7 billion people being empowered to figure out what they want to do by themselves. Gotta give you due respect though, that's some serious level mental gymnastics you're pulling.

7 billion people have more information relevant to economic decision making than a handful of people at the top. I don't understand what is so hard to accept about this. Can you even point to a single economy that has built wealth as a direct result of socialist/communist policy at even anywhere the rate of people getting lifted out of poverty in places like China (think half a billion)? When I point out 1+1=2 and you say it equals 3, you're dahm right i'm going to suggest you're either stupid or wrong.

When i said socialism/communism was the worst and most harmful religion ever, i meant it literally. Dare you to stack the death counts and prove me otherwise. Or you can continue believing in narrative over fact, just keep your religion out of politics please.

@elodea he's saying you don't realize the irony in you calling out communism then being like "oh look free market! it's near-flawless it's sure to solve all our problems if we apply it unilaterally!" but naively don't expect the negative fallout that's bound to come with it and how the twisted root of humans but more specifically people who've felt power will corrupt and twist it into something unrecognizable and evil without fail.

but no of course the experience of a billion different people throughout history doesn't apply here.

Free markets are people. People free to choose whatever they want to buy and sell, produce or trade insofar as nothing is coerced. What on earth do you think is the purpose of life if not defined entirely by the goals of each unique person in the pursuit of happiness?

This isn't something you 'apply' because there is nothing to 'apply'. The absolute gall and naive arrogance for you to suggest as much is disturbing, as if being molested is the natural state of order. This is about getting your adhd busybody hands out of other people's business where they don't belong.

"Humans are so twisted in nature and get corrupted by power, so let's give them guns and let them form a government to rule over us and tell us how to live and what to do". Yes good idea. The amount of double think on display is truly staggering. I'm at the end of my rope here. Bowing out from the madhouse like Chris for the sake of my own sanity.

Blind religious fanaticism like this will truly be the end of us. Brainwashed to hell and back again on a wave of nice feeling emotions. I even used to be one of you until I started thinking for myself and realised that truly caring about people as individuals didn't lie where i thought it did.

You don't seem to know what communism is. Read here to see that Stalin isn't actually part of it in general and that it is actually a pretty broad thing. You seem to think communism is that one thing, but that one thing was just a single, badly implemented, instance of a single variation.

Watch the news for what happens in that case. It's called War. It's a real problem. A big one.
Yes it's irrational, we're not discussing War right now, just saying that it is a thing.

Providing a minimum level of food, healthcare and education to all your people is a very important key to building a rich nation. A nation full of illiterate workers who have to work for their food from age 10 onward won't be very successful.

A capitalistic free market let alone is simply not that perfect. No, there are not just win/win relationships. That's not how capitalism works. It's not how free markets work. It's not how any of this works.
There is either a very substantial difference in some of the definitions we use or we have vastly different views on how people act in certain situations.

Yeah and if I have everything and you have nothing, not even education, then I'll tell you to go work 70 hours a week for me at a price that will keep you barely alive. I win and take all the profit from your work. No you can't just go find some other work, you're too poor to travel far and there are is a gigantic amount of people who are just like you. You're totally replaceable to me and you can be happy to have work at all. Others don't, they sit on the streets and bag for pennies.

Yes that happens. No ignoring that isn't going to save us time, it's the whole reason why your dream of an uncontrolled free market without state based welfare would turn into a nightmare.

In your words: 1+1 is 2.

Todays Germany for the most part is a good example of a free market economy that has a proper welfare for citizens who need help and a somewhat proper control of the market to prevent it from turning ugly (monopoly control, lots of laws protecting customers, etc). By law everyone has access to health care, food, a warm place to sleep at night and our economy still works out pretty well overall. Turns out people don't just stop working because you provide them with social security.

I don't know, i'm not sure whether @elodea is extremely optimistic about humans or so pessimistic about the current system that he thinks this is better.

But in a 100% free market, those who win will win harder. Those who lose will lose harder. Because money breeds money. The rich simply keep their money through inheritance. The poor will stay poor because they have no choice.

www.balancedrebellion.com

This site, accepts pledges from both democrats and republicans, who decide to vote Johnson instead, and matches their numbers between democrats and republicans, so they don't feel bad for "swaying the outcome of the vote for one candidate or the other", but still show support for a third party as a message of disapproval towards the other clown candidates.

you know what I don't even care that this guy's a rep. This idea is what I call actually doing something about things and I think it's genius!

what's best about it is that I am actually convinced with enough publicity this could work. who would dissagree that the majority of the U.S. would vote neither drumpf nor hillary if given the chance? well, here's your chance!

the only thing that could make it fail is that it took this long to spring up. and there may not be enough time to spread the word left.

I won't be voting Johnson in November because I have many, many issues with his fiscal policy, but that ad is hilarious.

The Republican party with Lincoln in the lead didn't support slavery and neither did the (wigs? I can't remember their name exactly) which were essentially the rich factory owners up north. So soon the Democratic party came into play down down south. These all switched around much later in US history. *Might be a bit off, my US history is a bit rough apologies if so.

I know about all this and I think it's an interesting note that I'll elaborate on :

Why is it that with that in mind people in this thread just CANNOT seem to differentiate "Communism", the ideal expressed in Karl Marx's "Capital" and so on from "Communism" the regime currently in place in Russia and many other places?

It's really bewildering that the inability to understand words may not mean what they originally meant comes predominantly in the world from rightist Americans when they have in their own culture the (two) most characterized example of a word-flip to date.