Libertarianism - Page 2

Originally Posted by tonton

Because governments won't charge people for crossing a street or for breathing air that just happens to belong to them. Remember the guy whose house burned down because the Fire Services Department didn't cover his area unless he paid an extra fee?

Imagine if every Fire Department were like that.

Imagine if every Police department were like that.

Imagine if every street in every town required payment to access.

Imagine if you had to pay to walk down the sidewalk in front of your house because somebody else owned it.

Now, we have water bills, electricity bills gas bills...

Oh, sorry, Frank, I can't go to your house. I didn't pay the road access fee in your part of town. Sorry, I can't go to the park because I don't have any spare change on me today. Sorry, I can't talk to you now. The Trump Industries Police Officers are here. The neighbors can smell the curry I'm cooking in the kitchen, and they called TIPO to complain against me for invading their airspace with the fragrance.

I own an airline, but I can't fly anywhere. Aircorp, the corporation who owns the airspace between Los Angeles and Las Vegas just doubled the fee, and only the mega-Airlines can afford to pay, because Aircorp gives them a discount.

Originally Posted by tonton

Taking advantage of stupid people and poor people with marketing is pretty much the same thing.

Originally Posted by BR

Isn't that what your god does?

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

At 1.43 mins to 1.53 mins Joey Hill claims that the government regulations on pollution cause the pollution problems. It's hard not to confer from that that he thinks all the pollution would be prevented by property rights being enforced. Whether he's too idealistic or just too angry is hard to tell. Maybe a mixture of both?

Illegal immigrants shouldn’t get welfare, but neither should anyone else. They shouldn’t have to pay taxes either (nor should anyone else). And perhaps they shouldn’t be granted citizenship, but in a free society, being a citizen shouldn’t matter much. If politicians want to keep them from voting, that is fine as far as it goes. But no actual rights should be deprived of someone due to their home address.

Originally Posted by tonton

My parents are being forced to move from the home that they own because their HOA fees have quadrupled in the last decade. I haven't seen taxes quadruple for anyone in the last decade.

And if you're saying the residents should own the common areas... the citizens should own the air and the land... the home-owning comrades should own the roads...

I really don't know what to say if that's what you're suggesting.

The favorite explanation of inflation is that greedy businessmen persist in putting up prices in order to increase their profits. But surely the quotient of business "greed" has not suddenly taken a great leap forward since World War II. Weren't businesses equally "greedy" in the nineteenth century and up to 1941? So why was there no inflation trend then? Moreover, if businessmen are so avaricious as to jack up prices 10% per year, why do they stop there? Why do they wait; why don't they raise prices by 50%, or double or triple them immediately? What holds them back?

A similar flaw rebuts another favorite explanation of inflation: that unions insist on higher wage rates, which in turn leads businessmen to raise prices. Apart from the fact that inflation appeared as long ago as ancient Rome and long before unions arrived on the scene, and apart from the lack of evidence that union wages go up faster than nonunion or that prices of unionized products rise faster than of nonunionized, a similar question arises: Why don't businesses raise their prices anyway? What is it that permits them to raise prices by a certain amount, but not by more? If unions are that powerful, and businesses that responsive, why don't wages and prices rise by 50%, or 100%, per year? What holds them back?

A government-inspired TV propaganda campaign a few years ago got a bit closer to the mark: consumers were blamed for inflation by being too "piggy," by eating and spending too much. We have here at least the beginning of an explanation of what holds businesses or unions back from demanding still higher prices: consumers won't pay them. Coffee prices zoomed upward a few years ago; a year or two later they fell sharply because of consumer resistance to some extent from a flashy consumer "boycott" but more importantly from a shift in consumer buying habits away from coffee and toward lower-priced substitutes. So a limit on consumer demand holds them back.

Originally Posted by MJ1970

I disagree with the premise of your question. In a situation where there is no coercion, it would be consumers who make a choice where the money goes. Consumers direct the economy. They spend the money. Producers respond to this. So in the medical example, consumers would be making decisions about drugs, doctors, tests, hospitals, etc.

There is an incorrect underlying assumption among the left that companies control everything in a free-market. Wrong. It is in this so-called "middle way" mixed economy in which companies use the government to control things. The medical field is a great example. The whole healthcare market is used as an example of free-market failure when it is one of the furthest from being a free-market. There is a persistent blindness about this that baffles me.

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Would you L's be willing to do this deal if offered today-


Pay less tax so that the share you would have paid to social services like healthcare, libraries, schools etc was deducted from your taxes but you and your children could not access those things under any circumstances whatsoever for the rest of your lives and your childrens lives?

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

And for the rest of your children's lives too?

Originally Posted by Hands Sandon

Wow, I hadn't expected that answer. So how do you justify taking those same programs away for children before they become adults and can choose if L's had the votes to do so?