- 5,588
- Dahlonega, GA
- ryzno
I doubt it. Though some do get scholarships for whatever reason.
Libertarian Party: Your Thoughts?
- Thread starter Sage
- 1,829 comments
- 71,519 views
- 5,051
- Netherlands
that indeed is subjective. I phrased it wrong. I was trying to point out that an individual having 1 billion computers is subjectively excessive to a majority of people. Even to people that own enormous servers. It is relative to the subject, time and location. 1tb is a lot of disk space for many. But in the 90’s it was extremely excessive and unnecessary.
- 5,588
- Dahlonega, GA
- ryzno
But where would we be now if we had that technology then?
- 7,526
- Exorcet
- OE Exorcet
That sounds like pretty shaky ground to me though. The majority may just think that way simply because they don't have a need for 1 billion computers. That doesn't make a 1 billion computer problem require any lesser amount of resources no matter how rare it is.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Folding@home
It's not an individual, but an individual could do something similar. Likewise the majority could find it pointless or excessive no matter who runs it.
It's also not 1 billion computers, but I'm sure that having such an amount would be helpful.
But the problems that existed today existed in the 90's. If someone simply wanted to store 1 TB of data then, they'd have as much need as 1 TB drive as people do today. Perhaps it would be a rarer need, but it would still be a need.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
Actually I think a billion is not that hard to visualize. It's not too difficult to visualize a thousand of something. And we can all visualize what a million dollar house looks like. A thousand houses is a large neighborhood, so just picture a large neighborhood of million dollar homes and you're looking at a billion dollars.
Or you could look at this (this skyscraper is roughly $1B):
Or it would buy 2/3rds of this:
Thank you for finally admitting that your issue is not income inequality and is instead poverty. So, after all that, can we knock it off with income inequality and just say poverty?
Edit:
I knew this discussion sounded familiar.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
Poverty is a symptom of income inequality and visa versa though. Dont misunderstand and think that my statement was to eradicate income inequality. My point was that the rise and too much income inequality is not good in a society and should be adressed. In a society where the poorest have acces to a home, food, healthcare and education, I will admit income inequality is not a problem.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
How?
How?
So... it's poverty then that's the issue. Income inequality is not an issue.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
- 5,588
- Dahlonega, GA
- ryzno
How many times do I need to tell you they do have access to said things?
The government and countless private programs provide help to those in need.
The charity I worked for specifically helped the homeless with housing, jobs, food etc... You'd probably be amazed at how many people would drop out of the program to go back to whatever they were doing. It actually hurt me a little to know I was busting my butt for some people that really didn't care about themselves.
The majority of our homeless are in their situation because they are alcoholic or druggies and the majority of them don't want help.
TBH I'll give the person who is honest and wants a beer before I'll give something to the person holding a sign saying "will work for food" just to get cussed out by said person cause I won't give them some cash and they don't want to work. I'd actually buy food and pay the few that were willing to work and help me at my job.
Call me an ass....
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
How do poor people become poorer as a result of other people becoming richer?
This really smacks hard of a well trodden misunderstanding of economics - the "piece of the pie" concept. The idea that there's less available if someone has more. I know you're not saying that directly, but I'm trying to figure out why you're working so hard to apply that thinking.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
I was not referring to chairty or government assistence.
Let me rephrase. A society where the poorest dont need social security, government assistence, charity is a society with no problems with income inequality.
One is not the result of the other. rising ncome inequality is a symptom, not the cause. If the poor would not get poorer, then the income inequality would not be rising and be a problem.
Last edited:
- 84,360
- Rule 12
- GTP_Famine
It's also what libertarians want, because that would mean there's no such government programs, reducing the size, scope and cost of government - and thus taxation on income.
BobK
Premium
- 7,020
- Massachusetts, USA
Yes I do, I'd made note of the point when I was a billion seconds old.
Visualizing a million is not difficult at all; it's quite easy in fact. Take a large piece of paper, draw a square a meter wide. Now draw parallel loin es within the square one millimeter apart. Rotate the paper 90 degrees and draw another set of parallel lines at right angles to the first. You will have a sheet of paper with a million squares on it, small enough that you can easily see the whole and large enough that you can see the individual squares. I've actually done something similar with sheets of graph paper.
Now visualize a football field covered with these sheets of paper with million squares on each. There's a billion squares plus.
I find it appalling that you would sanction violence against somebody who has done nothing wrong.
No, but you got the "vice versa" part right. Poverty is not a symptom of income equality. It's very much the other way around.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
- 5,051
- Netherlands
Why do libertarians view the world in absolutes? The world is not black and white, right and wrong.
Didnt deny it. I elaborated that income inequality is part of the problem.
I understood, but I also pointed out it isnt a realistic scenario. Just like communism (everybody voluntary sharing) is a good idea, but not realistic.
The government in my opinion not only needs to protect people's rights, but also have oversight, manage public services and resources etc. And also help the people that might need it, so that people do not need to rely on charity.
edit: correct spelling
Last edited:
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
How? To be clear, being a symptom is not being part of the problem.
- 5,051
- Netherlands
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
I voted for libertarians for over a decade. This month I voted democrat (for president) for the first time in my life, and I didn't stop there, I voted democrats for most of the ticket. I still "identify" as a libertarian, and I still think that party captures my views best. Most of you know I voted democrat because I felt that the message joe biden was carrying was clearly enough different from Trump, and I could endorse it, that I was very confident "compromising" a little further with the candidate I voted for so that I could send a clear message that I felt was more important.
But I have to admit that I'm a much more chill libertarian than I used to be, and I wanted to share the two major revelations that chilled me out.
1) Government acts more like a corporation than I thought
I guess it took me a while to examine this notion that people have that government employees are somehow born into the government employee caste, where they're required to remain in perpetuity. Eventually I met enough of them, and interacted with enough of them, to realize that government employees come from the private sector to government service, and go to the private sector after government service, routinely. Even in areas of government where you might not think that's possible, they're constantly looking. Obviously if you take a NASA civil servant they might find a job at Boeing or SpaceX. That kinda goes without saying. But what about a post office employee? UPS. What about military? Security, fitness, leadership. What about politicians? Well... Trump came from TV and real estate, and who is saying he can't head back?
So government has to compete, directly, with private industry to hire employees. But what about areas where the government has a monopoly? Surely there the government is remarkably wasteful right? Well... not completely. Contractors come in to do jobs for less money, which creates additional room under the budget and lets the agency accomplish its goals more effectively. So, in a very tangible way, government agencies are held accountable by contractors.
The line between government and private industry is so much more blurry than I realized early on in life. And it's this understanding that prevented me from falling for the "drain the swamp" rhetoric from the right. Civil servants (terrible title) are not a swamp, they're just people doing their jobs, often quite effectively. Forcing turnover at every position every 4 or 8 years is a recipe for vast government incompetence, re-learning, re-inventing, re-training. You want people to keep their jobs, it's more efficient.
2) Corporations act more like government than I thought
Large corporations get really, painfully, disorganized. It's just not an easy task to manage a giant structure. It's not so much that the government is bad at it because it's government, as we just discussed government has to act a bit like a corporation, it's that the task is challenging across the board, and everyone is bad at it.
Corporations find themselves working the same project in two different branches, sometimes two different countries, without realizing it. And corporations get more and more government-like as they span many countries and interact with different sets of laws. They also lobby, and sometimes write laws.
But also, corporations, just like government, promote narcissists who do not have the interest of the organization in mind. Corporate management is a very strange world of aggressive power-hungry self-centered people who are chasing an invisible ladder for misguided notions of status, just like government. And just like government, they don't value competence in each other as much as they value their own twisted egocentric worldview. As a result, corporate management often does a bad job at achieving the goals of the corporation. The larger the company, generally speaking, the more mismanaged that company is. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this is the shareholder/CEO relationship in a publicly traded company. Where the whims of the very irrational stock market are held up as somehow more relevant or worthy, every single quarter, than the mission of the company, and are used in a very twisted representation of the effectiveness of corporate management.
====
The takeaway from all of that is just that corporations and government are just people. Flawed, mostly well meaning, fairly inept, people just trying to do their jobs and get a little personal satisfaction out of life. And from that perspective, libertarianism gets a little less militant. I'm still very much a libertarian, but in this time of (hopefully) relaxation, I thought I'd share how I got a little more relaxed about government.
But I have to admit that I'm a much more chill libertarian than I used to be, and I wanted to share the two major revelations that chilled me out.
1) Government acts more like a corporation than I thought
I guess it took me a while to examine this notion that people have that government employees are somehow born into the government employee caste, where they're required to remain in perpetuity. Eventually I met enough of them, and interacted with enough of them, to realize that government employees come from the private sector to government service, and go to the private sector after government service, routinely. Even in areas of government where you might not think that's possible, they're constantly looking. Obviously if you take a NASA civil servant they might find a job at Boeing or SpaceX. That kinda goes without saying. But what about a post office employee? UPS. What about military? Security, fitness, leadership. What about politicians? Well... Trump came from TV and real estate, and who is saying he can't head back?
So government has to compete, directly, with private industry to hire employees. But what about areas where the government has a monopoly? Surely there the government is remarkably wasteful right? Well... not completely. Contractors come in to do jobs for less money, which creates additional room under the budget and lets the agency accomplish its goals more effectively. So, in a very tangible way, government agencies are held accountable by contractors.
The line between government and private industry is so much more blurry than I realized early on in life. And it's this understanding that prevented me from falling for the "drain the swamp" rhetoric from the right. Civil servants (terrible title) are not a swamp, they're just people doing their jobs, often quite effectively. Forcing turnover at every position every 4 or 8 years is a recipe for vast government incompetence, re-learning, re-inventing, re-training. You want people to keep their jobs, it's more efficient.
2) Corporations act more like government than I thought
Large corporations get really, painfully, disorganized. It's just not an easy task to manage a giant structure. It's not so much that the government is bad at it because it's government, as we just discussed government has to act a bit like a corporation, it's that the task is challenging across the board, and everyone is bad at it.
Corporations find themselves working the same project in two different branches, sometimes two different countries, without realizing it. And corporations get more and more government-like as they span many countries and interact with different sets of laws. They also lobby, and sometimes write laws.
But also, corporations, just like government, promote narcissists who do not have the interest of the organization in mind. Corporate management is a very strange world of aggressive power-hungry self-centered people who are chasing an invisible ladder for misguided notions of status, just like government. And just like government, they don't value competence in each other as much as they value their own twisted egocentric worldview. As a result, corporate management often does a bad job at achieving the goals of the corporation. The larger the company, generally speaking, the more mismanaged that company is. Perhaps the ultimate expression of this is the shareholder/CEO relationship in a publicly traded company. Where the whims of the very irrational stock market are held up as somehow more relevant or worthy, every single quarter, than the mission of the company, and are used in a very twisted representation of the effectiveness of corporate management.
====
The takeaway from all of that is just that corporations and government are just people. Flawed, mostly well meaning, fairly inept, people just trying to do their jobs and get a little personal satisfaction out of life. And from that perspective, libertarianism gets a little less militant. I'm still very much a libertarian, but in this time of (hopefully) relaxation, I thought I'd share how I got a little more relaxed about government.
Last edited:
- 28,498
- Bratvegas
- GTP_Liquid
It hasn't gone unnoticed. I mean, it's your own reasons and your own journey but certainly, I have noticed a change in your postings here in the OCE in the last 6 months, never mind the past four years cumulatively. I think 'chill' libertarian is a good way to describe it.
Let's see if someone can now dethrone you in the eventual, next GTP Awards for Most Opinionated.
Let's see if someone can now dethrone you in the eventual, next GTP Awards for Most Opinionated.
Joey D
Premium
- 46,678
- Boyne Falls, MI
- GTP_Joey
- GTP Joey
While @Danoff has become a more chill libertarian, I feel like I've become more aggressively libertarian. I absolutely loathe the government and I think Trump and his cronies pushed me even more towards the idea that the government can be an absolute trainwreck and should not be trusted. It's no inconceivable that someone just as, or *gulp* more, extreme than Trump could challenge Biden (or Harris) in 2024 and win. I want the government to have as little power as possible so in the event that does happen, there's slightly less of a chance of things going to hell.
I'm also of the mindset that the government can't do anything worthwhile. I'm mostly aware of how it interacts with healthcare due to my job, but it seems like anything it gets involved with ends up with wild cost overruns and just mismanagement all around. There are a few places where it doesn't completely botch it, but in many of the major places, it does.
Finally, I think as I've started making more money and thus paying more taxes, it's made me angrier about how those tax dollars are being spent. I want the money I've worked for, I want anyone to have the money they've worked for and I want them to be able to spend that money on whatever they see fit to spend it on.
Weirdly, I only really have these types of conversations on GTP now. I used to jump in on social media, but the loudest people on those mediums are often the dumbest so there's no use wasting my time. At least here on GTP most members are more than capable of having a discussion, even if their ideas are radically different. I know @GranTurNismo is very progressive in his ideas, but I read what he posts and responds because he's actually interested in having a conversation about ideas. I think that's one thing that really makes this site great, people from all over the world can come to a commonplace and share radically different opinions and not have it devolve into a pissing contest.
*cracks knuckles*
I got this...all I want for Christmas is youuuuuuu!
Oh crap, wrong forum competition.
I'm also of the mindset that the government can't do anything worthwhile. I'm mostly aware of how it interacts with healthcare due to my job, but it seems like anything it gets involved with ends up with wild cost overruns and just mismanagement all around. There are a few places where it doesn't completely botch it, but in many of the major places, it does.
Finally, I think as I've started making more money and thus paying more taxes, it's made me angrier about how those tax dollars are being spent. I want the money I've worked for, I want anyone to have the money they've worked for and I want them to be able to spend that money on whatever they see fit to spend it on.
Weirdly, I only really have these types of conversations on GTP now. I used to jump in on social media, but the loudest people on those mediums are often the dumbest so there's no use wasting my time. At least here on GTP most members are more than capable of having a discussion, even if their ideas are radically different. I know @GranTurNismo is very progressive in his ideas, but I read what he posts and responds because he's actually interested in having a conversation about ideas. I think that's one thing that really makes this site great, people from all over the world can come to a commonplace and share radically different opinions and not have it devolve into a pissing contest.
Let's see if someone can now dethrone you in the eventual, next GTP Awards for Most Opinionated.
*cracks knuckles*
I got this...all I want for Christmas is youuuuuuu!
Oh crap, wrong forum competition.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
Agreed. But I think we'd disagree on the details on this one if we really dug into it.
I don't see this as being particularly different from other large organizations. The US government does do some worthwhile things, and so do large corporations, but on the whole, cost overruns happen when lots of people get together.
I can agree with the sentiment, but money is getting less and less important to me compared to other priorities. Couple that with how difficult it is to efficiently use money for charity. I do it, but it's not easy.
Last edited:
- 11,297
- Marin County
This has been the single biggest thing pushing me to the left in recent years. I wish I could pinpoint it's origin because I don't think it was always this way. I think Reaganism unleashed a profoundly selfish and cynical character in the right that has culminated fully in Trumpism. Reagan made it OK to completely abandon faith in our institutions. Could you even imagine a project the scope of the interstate highway system being accomplished in 2020? No ****ing way with the current GOP - and the IHS was begun under a Republican! And yet that project has been one of the most instrumental parts of our tremendous growth since the 1950s.
The entirety of the GOP ethos is what can I do for myself - and in the case of the upper echelons of business, that typically results in things like orchestrating stock buy backs (or other similar maneuvers) to juice stock market value for the single goal of unlocking executive pay bonuses. These people cannot see past their own toes. Their is no greater vision (besides people like Musk and a few other luminaries) Sometimes I think these corporate CEOs don't know what their own company even does. For a lot of people, it's easier to reflexively say that government sucks than it is to acknowledge that administering a country the size of the United States is damn hard and that there will necessarily be compromises and you are not always going to get what you want.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
I don't know what exactly you're claiming Reagan did. And I'm not even entirely sure that I agree with the GOP ethos. I've been hearing a lot more of "the government is responsible for the economy" out of the GOP than I had previously. It's not about "what can I do for myself" is more a long the lines of "if the economy is not good, blame government".
Anyway, the stock market is not something I believe in, and management of companies via the stock market is hilariously bad - and that's precisely how a lot of companies manage. It's mostly myopic shareholders/board of directors meetings resulting in myopic CEO/policy selection resulting in a lot of very short-term strategy. Some companies manage to rise above it, but it's not easy.
Last edited:
- 11,297
- Marin County
It's hard for me to say because I wasn't around. But Reagan seems like an inflection point. Before him there seemed to be a faith in institutions in the US and after him, there was not (on the right, anyways). To me Reaganism (and the subsequent platform of the GOP since) seems to embody some warped & dumbed-down version of Objectivism where all that stuff about striving for greatness and accomplishment was discarded as too nuanced and rather the takeaway has become "more money = winning" (which kind of misses Rand's point) and that the government is inherently an obstacle to glory. (To be fair, Rand was pretty clear on that part at least.) Objectivism has been even further pared down in the Trump era with reason being totally thrown out the window - though with Reagan's evangelical underpinnings that was never really part of the deal. The reality is that Objectivism requires intellectual rigor...without it you get, eventually, Trumpism. If your identity is tied up in a belief that your worth can be measured in the dollar signs in your bank account (and, importantly, nothing else) then you'll achieve that status by any means necessary and you will lash out at anything and everything that you perceive as preventing you from realizing your identity (brown people, liberals, China, whatever).
Also too, by it's very nature Objectivism really only works for the best and the brightest and so applying that ethos universally is going to cause some major issues - there isn't room for the average human in Ayn Rand's world (let alone the below average ones!), and that's a problem.
Danoff
Premium
- 32,976
- Mile High City
I'm not sure that's true, but it is definitely a problem for the Trump $$=value-of-human vision.
Last edited:
ROAD_DOGG33J
Premium
- 13,890
- IL, USA
- holyc0w1
- holyc0w
Has anybody read or seen any of Ron Paul's emails or views? He seems to be firmly anti-mask and anti-vaccine. Has he turned to Trumpism or is this part of marketing for donations?
- 9,401
- Western Sydney
- mustafur
I came from a very similar line of thinking years ago but I respect you immensely for flexibility in this as I can understand the difficulty coming from a Libertarian point of view that sometimes you have to pick the side of liberty when most will purely think of the economic perspective above all(which from my experience when I was a libertarian was weighted more on economic then liberty which was also a reason I questioned myself on this).
Whilst I would describe my self as a social democrat now, I would still say a libertarian would be better allied to a Biden admin then Trump just from his actions recently that seriously threaten the constitution and Democratic freedom, Trump is such a threat to future liberty that I can fully understand switching of sides in this perspective.
Joey D
Premium
- 46,678
- Boyne Falls, MI
- GTP_Joey
- GTP Joey
I don't know two libertarians who would agree completely on much. Sure their ideas might be roughly similar but they're going to have varying ways to go about it. My wife likes to send me this picture whenever she hears me complaining about the system:
This also works because of my Scottish heritage too, so maybe it's a twofer.
This does make sense, but at least with corporations, there's some degree of oversight. At least if a company botches something the shareholders are going to start demanding heads to roll. With the government, they could botch things horribly and still get 71 million Americans to vote for the person who actively did the botching. There's supposed to be oversight, but it's been so corrupted, it's hard to trust it. I know the Supreme Court should keep things in check, but it's so stacked with justices who have questionable views that I'm not sure it's really going to do what it's supposed to do. Then you have Congress who has a bunch of members who are just mouthpieces for whoever writes them the biggest check.
I had a rough start to my career. My first real job laid me off twice, then my second job laid me off within 11 months of hiring me, then I got a temp job where I worked stupid hours. I didn't get really going with my career until 2012 so I feel a little behind on where I want to be. I didn't start making good money until I moved to Utah four years ago and could finally start building a retirement account. I don't want money to be the most important thing, but I do want to keep what I make and be able to provide the best possible life for my family. Sure I do make stupid purchases (like buying a new car on a whim) but overall I do want to have my family's best interests at heart.
Out of college I mostly considered myself a "liberal libertarian" which really doesn't make a ton of sense now that I look back on it. But I think many of us have strange ideas when we're young adults since we're still trying to figure out the world and many of us haven't had our souls crushed yet. Something else my wife likes to tell me is "the younger you are the more you relate to SpongeBob, but the older you get, the more of a Squidward you become."
- 2,616
- Lincoln, NE
- huskeR_32
Somewhere near the intersection of these two thoughts - the government could be an efficient tool, and most people are charitable at heart - lays the optimism for government that I continue to hold onto. It's too bad that so many people let themselves be convinced by the Donald Trumps of the world that we should always look to "other" our fellow humans, that we should never miss a chance to take advantage of each other (because all those "others" are always looking to do the same to us), and that the haves and have-nots is really just a reflection of the worthy and the unworthy.
I don't know how to get there from here. But I'll never stop thinking it can be done.
