Forums

[Tyrone Slothrop]

Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield

I think all government has authoritarian tendencies within it. For this reason, I think it's healthy to always distrust it. And be thoroughly suspicious of those who seek to work in politics.

OK, whatever. Libertarians, of course, are in favor of government, just one that uses authoritarian methods (courts, police) to protect their rights (property, tort, contract).

On point two, we are not Norway. Or Denmark, or Sweden.

See my response to Hank. When you said that democracies collapse, you sounded like you were making some kind of point about democracy as a system of government, rather than a point about how the American poor in particular can't be trusted with self-governance, as compared to poor people in other countries. Make up your mind.

Again, it's a balancing act. You can only give the people so much power. It has to be checked or men will simply vote for policies that aid themselves until the thing craters. Tragedy of the Commons at the voting booth. Applies to the rich, the poor, the middle... literally everyone. Equally.

This would be a more interesting point if you weren't saying it to urge that only people with more money be given the power to vote for policies that aid themselves, which means exploitation of those who aren't voting. Actually, check that -- it's not an interesting point at all. No one ever said the point of government is altruism.

I'm highlighting the good and bad of the ideology.

I'm still waiting for the good part, unless you're saying that letting rich people exploit poor people is per se good.

If you're prosthelytizing, you've got some authoritarian stuff going on upstairs.

If I'm prosthelytizing? I like it when you make up new words instead of repurposing existing words with new meanings.

In this basket, one will find more limousine liberals and conservative republicans than any other stripe of voter.

You missed my point. Try again, or don't bother.

Ralph Nader.

When Ralph Nader ran in 2000, he clearly was trying to inflate his own importance rather than to control anyone's anything. The earlier Nader is an example of what I said with environmentalists -- someone who sees serious harm in the world, in his case externalities caused by companies which didn't have to bear the costs of their businesses rather than pollution. Because you are unsympathetic to his view of the harms, you dismiss what he's doing as an exercise in trying to control people, rather than a good-faith effort to stop a harm in the world.

It's odd for you to point to Nader as an authoritarian, even with your idiosyncratic definition, since he has never (to my knowledge) held political office.

He can compete. He's not blown out by larger competitors before he can even get a start. The smart little guy who bet on the collapse and avoided exposure to the risks does even better. He gets asymmetrical returns picking up assets at next to nothing.

No he can't, because he doesn't have money. And in a recession, he can't borrow, because the whole point of the recession is funding dries up. Your "little guy who bet on the collapse" is a rich person who uses everyone else's poverty to get richer because he has liquidity when others don't -- not an example of anyone making the actual economy function better by creative anything.