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Gary Johnson - Libertarian for President - 2012
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Unposter



Joined: 04 Jun 2006

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 5:34 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I would also add that some definition of what a free market is or what libertarianism is would be a help because even between all the different so-called libertarians on this board, I don't have a clear sense of what you are all talking about to be honest.

Even when people say I don't want the government to pick winners and losers, I don't really know what that means either. Does that include, let's say, subsidies for education? Is that picking winners and losers? What about building a street? Is that picking winners and losers? I mean the government decides where to build it and how it is maintained.

I am not trying to be facetious (sp?), I am just trying to understand - honestly!
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 7:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

A final definition of free market may be impossible. But wikipedia provides a working definition:

Quote:
A free market is a market where the price of a good or service is, in theory, determined by supply and demand, rather than by governmental regulation. A free market contrasts with a controlled market or regulated market, where price, supply or demand are subject to regulation or direct control by government. An economy composed entirely of free markets is referred to as a free-market economy.

Although in contemporary usage free markets are commonly associated with capitalism, free markets have been advocated by socialists and have been included in various different proposals for market socialism.


Note that free market principles are more fundamental than capitalist principles.

Free Marketeers would espouse:

* Subjective theory of labor value

The subjective theory of value, also known as the theory of subjective value, is an economic theory of value that identifies worth as being based on the wants and needs of the members of a society, as opposed to value being inherent to an object. It holds that to possess value an object must be useful, with the extent of that value dependent upon the ability of an object to satisfy the wants of any given individual

* Judicial intervention (and gov't enforcement pursuant to judicial order) and oversight over contract and tort.

* Abstention of gov't from market participation whenever possible. Constructing roads, educating children, or taxation of commerce to supply such investments may or may not involve market participation. In a practical sense, it usually does, because industrial policy comes in many forms.

The purposes people have when advocating or defending free market principles may vary greatly. Some want to promote commerce and wealth and prosperity. Others want to promote freedom and happiness however much as possible. A few want to construct a utopia.
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Titus



Joined: 19 May 2012

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 9:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

sirius black wrote:
Like pretty much any ideology, we can take some things from Libertarianism. A great many things perhaps.
However, its in purest form its Darwinism. Human beings can not sustain an ongoing society under those conditions.


Darwinism is survival of the fittest. I'm convinced that libertarianism, like the neo-liberalism we now live under, would produce survival of the cheats.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 9:54 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unposter wrote:
For what it is worth, I think (I think) Sirius Black meant Social "Darwinism" and not Darwinism, which are in fact two completely different concepts. Darwin's thinking was strictly biological. Other thinkers have abstracted from Darwin's ideas into their own ideas about society and culture.

Marx definitely believed in historical (social) evolution. In my personal opinion, it is one of the things he got terribly wrong.

I don't know if "communism" is the ideology that has killed more people. I would bet if it is not Christianity, it would give "communism" a good run for its money - Naziism too. But, I certainly don't know the statistics to prove one way or another.

But, I think the use of "socialism" here by VisitorQ is wrong. Minimumly, he (I think) should use "communism." And, I certainly wouldn't associate the communism of the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China as Marxism - at least not pure Marxism.

If I were to guess the most destructive ideology in human history, I would use the term "Totalitarianism" in all of its many facets.

My use of socialism is accurate. Socialism is collectivization, with state control over the economy. Communism is a type of socialism. Nazism was also a type of socialism (even by its own name, "national socialism"). Lastly we have democratic socialism in the West.

To say that Socialism has resulted in more deaths in history than any other ideology is just plain obvious. Even communism alone would take the cake. Mao killed around 50 million. Stalin killed as many people in the Ukraine through forced starvation (the Holodomor) as were killed by the Nazis in the Holocaust. I think it's safe to say that Christianity doesn't even come close, since there simply weren't that many people in the world when all those atrocities were going in.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 4:50 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Titus wrote:
sirius black wrote:
Like pretty much any ideology, we can take some things from Libertarianism. A great many things perhaps.
However, its in purest form its Darwinism. Human beings can not sustain an ongoing society under those conditions.


Darwinism is survival of the fittest. I'm convinced that libertarianism, like the neo-liberalism we now live under, would produce survival of the cheats.


I don't think any political ideology has an advantage on honesty or good conduct.

If you wanted to address such issues, you'd have to go back to education. What would I do? I would attack tests, particularly the SATs. I'd remove the ability of elite colleges to distinguish themselves through a numerical test result. I don't think I would succeed, though.

Related: Cheating Upwards

By the way, I highly recommend a monthly dose of good literature. It will help cure utopianism and any emergent ideologue tendencies.
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Unposter



Joined: 04 Jun 2006

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 6:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Kuros,

Thanks for your contributions to this thread. I found it helpful though I think I need a little time to digest it all.

One quick question though: would you (or anyone) consider the current U.S. economy, minus the recent bailouts of the banks and the financial industry, a free market system? And, the definition seemed to focus on price, not picking winners and losers. If it is more of a focus on price, and I understand that price is affected by competition, but isn't that pretty much what happens in the current US economy?

VisitorQ,

You definition of socialism is so broad that it would include all human endeavor, if so, you have made it meaningless. Yes, collective behavior is involved in much, though far from all, death in human history, but you cannot condemn all collective behavior - without it we would have no culture, no civilization, no society at all - even families.
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visitorq



Joined: 11 Jan 2008

PostPosted: Sun Sep 23, 2012 7:52 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Unposter wrote:
VisitorQ,

You definition of socialism is so broad that it would include all human endeavor, if so, you have made it meaningless. Yes, collective behavior is involved in much, though far from all, death in human history, but you cannot condemn all collective behavior - without it we would have no culture, no civilization, no society at all - even families.

The term I used was not "collective behavior", but "collectivization". If you are unfamiliar with it, then allow me to define it:

(From the New Oxford American Dictionary):

"organize (something) on the basis of ownership by the people or the state, abolishing private ownership or involvement : collectivized agriculture."
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Unposter



Joined: 04 Jun 2006

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 1:56 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I get your point, and as far as I can tell, it seems a good one, VisitorQ: there is a correlation between an abscence of freedom, especially politcal-democratic freedoms, and mass violence, which is why I still think the better word choice is totalitarianism.

Total abscence of private property must be very rare (I can imagine triabl societies). Generally, there is an oligarch that have high degrees of private property and then there are the masses or peasants who don't. Even in the U.S., technically, there is no private property, in the sense the government could legally seize it (such as eminent domain and for other reasons), pretty much anytime it wants.
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Tue Sep 25, 2012 4:10 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

Mainstream North America already believes in two out of three of the following free market principles:

* Subjective theory of labor value

* Judicial intervention and oversight over contract and tort.

* Abstention of gov't from market participation whenever possible.

The only real contention comes over the third principle. The gov't should not pick winners or losers. Thus, no bailouts to AIG or GM. Although the gov't could provide guidance as a Bankruptcy Trustee under Chapter 11.

Meanwhile, industrial policy differs greatly from bona fide insurance and security provisions, such as Medicare.

Hayek, from the Road to Serfdom (as lifted from comments at Marginal Revolution).

Hayek wrote:
�Nor is there any reason why the state should not assist individuals in providing for those common hazards of life against which, because of their uncertainty, few individuals can make adequate provision. Where, as in the case of sickness and accident, neither the desire to avoid such calamities nor the efforts to overcome their consequences are as a rule weakened by the provision of assistance, where, in short, we deal with genuinely insurable risks, the case for the state helping to organise a comprehensive system of social insurance is very strong. There are many points of detail where those wishing to preserve the competitive system and those wishing to supersede it by something different will disagree on the details of such schemes; and it is possible under the name of social insurance to introduce measures which tend to make competition more or less ineffective. But there is no incompatibility in principle between the state providing greater security in this way and the preservation of individual freedom.�
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 3:40 pm    Post subject: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

Conor Friedersdorf of TheAtlantic rejects Obama and endorses Gary Johnson

Quote:
Obama has done things that, while not comparable to a historic evil like chattel slavery, go far beyond my moral comfort zone. Everyone must define their own deal-breakers. Doing so is no easy task in this broken world. But this year isn't a close call for me.

I find Obama likable when I see him on TV. He is a caring husband and father, a thoughtful speaker, and possessed of an inspirational biography. On stage, as he smiles into the camera, using words to evoke some of the best sentiments within us, it's hard to believe certain facts about him:

1) Obama terrorizes innocent Pakistanis on an almost daily basis. The drone war he is waging in North Waziristan isn't "precise" or "surgical" as he would have Americans believe. It kills hundreds of innocents, including children. And for thousands of more innocents who live in the targeted communities, the drone war makes their lives into a nightmare worthy of dystopian novels. People are always afraid. Women cower in their homes. Children are kept out of school. The stress they endure gives them psychiatric disorders. Men are driven crazy by an inability to sleep as drones buzz overhead 24 hours a day, a deadly strike possible at any moment. At worst, this policy creates more terrorists than it kills; at best, America is ruining the lives of thousands of innocent people and killing hundreds of innocents for a small increase in safety from terrorists. It is a cowardly, immoral, and illegal policy, deliberately cloaked in opportunistic secrecy. And Democrats who believe that it is the most moral of all responsible policy alternatives are as misinformed and blinded by partisanship as any conservative ideologue.

2) Obama established one of the most reckless precedents imaginable: that any president can secretly order and oversee the extrajudicial killing of American citizens. Obama's kill list transgresses against the Constitution as egregiously as anything George W. Bush ever did. It is as radical an invocation of executive power as anything Dick Cheney championed. The fact that the Democrats rebelled against those men before enthusiastically supporting Obama is hackery every bit as blatant and shameful as anything any talk radio host has done.

3) Contrary to his own previously stated understanding of what the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution demand, President Obama committed U.S. forces to war in Libya without Congressional approval, despite the lack of anything like an imminent threat to national security.

In different ways, each of these transgressions run contrary to candidate Obama's 2008 campaign. (To cite just one more example among many, Obama has done more than any modern executive to wage war on whistleblowers. In fact, under Obama, Bush-era lawbreakers, including literal torturers, have been subject to fewer and less draconian attempts at punishment them than some of the people who conscientiously came forward to report on their misdeeds.) Obama ran in the proud American tradition of reformers taking office when wartime excesses threatened to permanently change the nature of the country. But instead of ending those excesses, protecting civil liberties, rolling back executive power, and reasserting core American values, Obama acted contrary to his mandate. The particulars of his actions are disqualifying in themselves. But taken together, they put us on a course where policies Democrats once viewed as radical post-9/11 excesses are made permanent parts of American life.

There is a candidate on the ballot in at least 47 states, and probably in all 50, who regularly speaks out against that post-9/11 trend, and all the individual policies that compose it. His name is Gary Johnson, and he won't win. I am supporting him because he ought to. Liberals and progressives care so little about having critiques of the aforementioned policies aired that vanishingly few will even urge that he be included in the upcoming presidential debates. If I vote, it will be for Johnson.


Obama needs to pay a price for abandoning the high-mindedness of his campaign, for abusing his Nobel speech to advocate for war, for the rank hypocritical behavior following his Cairo speech, and for transgressing the War Powers Act and thereby the Constitution.
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Fox



Joined: 04 Mar 2009

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:23 pm    Post subject: Re: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

It's difficult. Obama and Johnson are both defective in different ways. However, at this point in time, the ways Johnson is defective tend towards the technical (e.g. block granting Medicare/Medicaid funds to the states), while the ways in which Obama is defective are unfortunately tending towards the monstrous (I'm sorry, but U.S. killing policy -- I don't know what else to call it -- is not acceptable). If I had to personally choose who to hand the Presidency to in the next term, I'd probably hand it, unhappily, to Johnson (assuming I couldn't just give it to anyone, in which case I'd probably draft Russ Feingold or something).
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 4:35 pm    Post subject: Re: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

Fox wrote:
It's difficult. Obama and Johnson are both defective in different ways. However, at this point in time, the ways Johnson is defective tend towards the technical (e.g. block granting Medicare/Medicaid funds to the states), while the ways in which Obama is defective are unfortunately tending towards the monstrous (I'm sorry, but U.S. killing policy -- I don't know what else to call it -- is not acceptable). If I had to personally choose who to hand the Presidency to in the next term, I'd probably hand it, unhappily, to Johnson (assuming I couldn't just give it to anyone, in which case I'd probably draft Russ Feingold or something).


Its very disappointing. I remember during the 2008 campaign, I privately thought (privately because I advocated Hillary) that Obama's foreign policy would be better than the conventional wisdom believed it would, but his domestic policy would appear worse than the conventional wisdom believed it would. I believed Obama's international background, particularly his childhood in Muslim Indonesia, would allow him a better perspective on the world and give him better than average decision-making when it came to foreign policy. In some ways that international sensitivity is evident, but in more numerous and important ways Obama's acceptance of the status quo impera disappoints.

Obama signaled that he would focus on Afghanistan. Fine. Yet the three foreign policy excesses Mr. Friedersdorf outlined may surprise those who voted candidate Obama.
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Leon



Joined: 31 May 2010

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 5:41 pm    Post subject: Re: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

Kuros wrote:
Fox wrote:
It's difficult. Obama and Johnson are both defective in different ways. However, at this point in time, the ways Johnson is defective tend towards the technical (e.g. block granting Medicare/Medicaid funds to the states), while the ways in which Obama is defective are unfortunately tending towards the monstrous (I'm sorry, but U.S. killing policy -- I don't know what else to call it -- is not acceptable). If I had to personally choose who to hand the Presidency to in the next term, I'd probably hand it, unhappily, to Johnson (assuming I couldn't just give it to anyone, in which case I'd probably draft Russ Feingold or something).


Its very disappointing. I remember during the 2008 campaign, I privately thought (privately because I advocated Hillary) that Obama's foreign policy would be better than the conventional wisdom believed it would, but his domestic policy would appear worse than the conventional wisdom believed it would. I believed Obama's international background, particularly his childhood in Muslim Indonesia, would allow him a better perspective on the world and give him better than average decision-making when it came to foreign policy. In some ways that international sensitivity is evident, but in more numerous and important ways Obama's acceptance of the status quo impera disappoints.

Obama signaled that he would focus on Afghanistan. Fine. Yet the three foreign policy excesses Mr. Friedersdorf outlined may surprise those who voted candidate Obama.


I agree with all of this. The frustrating thing is that the only other viable candidate is calling Obama weak in all these areas and saying that he would do all of this, except more so.
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comm



Joined: 22 Jun 2010

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 7:01 pm    Post subject: Re: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

Leon wrote:
[I agree with all of this. The frustrating thing is that the only other viable candidate is calling Obama weak in all these areas and saying that he would do all of this, except more so.

And where does it stop? How bad do the Republican and Democrat "viable" candidates have to be before significant groups of Americans start voting for someone else?
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Kuros



Joined: 27 Apr 2004

PostPosted: Wed Sep 26, 2012 7:14 pm    Post subject: Re: TheAtlantic endorses . . . Gary Johnson Reply with quote

comm wrote:
Leon wrote:
[I agree with all of this. The frustrating thing is that the only other viable candidate is calling Obama weak in all these areas and saying that he would do all of this, except more so.

And where does it stop? How bad do the Republican and Democrat "viable" candidates have to be before significant groups of Americans start voting for someone else?


Well, I guess they would have to write off roughly half the voting population. For starters.
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