Freedom is not safe

Wrat

Sorry no – I don’t believe there is equivalence

Doing something like voting for welfare cuts and the removal of heathcare to get tax cuts that will bring them personal gain but which they know will cause others greater hardship is not ‘the same’ as someone voting to increase their taxes because although it means them paying more they want to help others and build a better society, even if that include making the world also better for themslves and their families.

The first seems deeply selfish the other not really selfish at all the 'ends' are not the same

Why would you think that the two are equivantly selfish?

 

wrst

Again this still goes toward undermining an already tottering right wing argument.

 

I am baffled as to how you got that out of anything I wrote , it certainly was not inferred or implied, I dont even know how to answer that

 

and what is your point?

 

is this a legal argument? I never said corporations dont discriminate , I imagine I could search up some cases where companies got sued for discrimination and the plaintiff lost. which would weaken your point which was my point
just using the point that: someone sued some proves something, but it does not , did I explain it well enough?

 

this is interesting
‘Reverse Discrimination’ Lawsuits Becoming an Increasing Concern (ncemploymentattorneys.com)

 

Any discussion of "freedom" in a libertarian context has to come to grips with Ayn Rand, the Prophet of Profit, who taught that altruism is a vice and selfishness is a virtue. I bring her up because Trudgin', whether he knows it or not, seems to share her values of natural hierarchy.:the notion that if we just give superior people a free hand it will work out for the good. Libertarians of the Right tend to like Ayn Rand, although she didn't return the sentiment; "hippies on the right' she called them (She didn't like the anarchic tendencies of the Libertarians, cuz it threatened law and order which was essential to protect capitalism. Her heroes in Fountainhead and Atlas shrugged were supermen of the Nietzschean mold, strong-willed innovators standing up to the little minds who run conventional society. These were the Men who Built America (on the backs of others), who had the gumption to take what they wanted, and push out of the way the lesser types who stood in the way of their superior vision. Heady stuff, appealing to those who fancied themselves supermen or admired such figures. Trouble is, some get confused and think unprincipled grifters like Trump are supermen because they push others around.

My people, the Chickasaws, were summarily robbed of their land around Tupelo, Miss., and dumped in Oklahoma. We think that was a bad thing. But Ayn Rand thought it was good, cuz our alleged "wish to continue a primitive existence", so that we could "live practically like an animal, or maybe a few caves above it" didn't count. "Any white person who could bring the element of civilization had the right to take over this country." https://www.theadvocates.org/2014/07/ayn-rand-american-indians/Actually, none of us were exactly living in caves. We had summer and winter houses, some log cabins in the white frontiersman mode, and we did a pretty good job of cultivating out land. Which is why the white settlers wanted it and their bulldozing President, Andrew Jackson, decided to clear us out. (Might makes right). More often than not, these self-styled "supermen" are not the benefactors they're made out to be. Naturally, Jackson is Trump's hero, and he was careful to greet Native American war veterans in front of a portrait of Jackson, which many took as an insult. The small detail that makes Trump using a 'Pocahontas' slur to Native Americans even worse As for Ayn Rand, she also turned out to be a grifter who ended life on the dole, taking welfare benefits she'd call others who took them "social parasites" for doing so. Be careful whom your choose as your role models and gurus.

 

It's not just a matter of feeling good, it's doing what's right, which may make one feel good but involves another dimension. The good feeling one person gets from doing what's right and the thrill another gets from raping a woman or taking candy from babies may feel equally good to the perpetrator , but the former is more beneficial to society and less disruptive to social order, so from a utilitarian standpoint, is better. I know some will argue, as Trudgin' seems to be, that ruthless types may be of greater benefit to society in the long run. I'd have to concede that Sargon of Akkad did a lot to advance civilization in the long run, even though he was a ruthless #$%^&. But I still would hesitate to raise my kids to be like Sargon. We have here the contrast between act utilitarian ethics and and rule utilitarian (and deontological) ethics. I'm definitely in the latter camp, along with John Stuart Mill. "It would be unworthy of an intelligent agent not to be consciously aware that the action is of a class which, if practiced generally, would be generally injurious, and that this is the ground of the obligation to abstain from it." Mill, Utilitarianism.

 

Bringing in moral judgement? Ok, but those who would rape/pillage/kill etc are morally bankrupt and probably mentally unstable, which goes way beyond just being selfish

 

I believe so , yes, and the only reason for my post was to say that using lawsuits as a BASIS for an argument may not be the best choice BECAUSE of frivolous lawsuits

 

In the end, political controversies are inevitably about moral judgments.

True, but it goes to the issue of whether some forms of satisfaction are more worthy than others from a utilitarian standpoint. Benthamite utilitarianism considered poetry and pushpin as having equally valid moral claims, but Mill argued, I think persuasively, that it would be better to be: "a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question." A person whose tastes for fast cars and loose women takes precedence over concern for others in need is basically in the pig category. I think a society in which more altruistic types predominate are qualitatively superior and will, in the long run, lead to greater happiness for the greatest number of people.

 

We're all free to choose what we wish to be and do and believe in the meaningless periods of that which we call our lives , consequences to follow. Endless discussions / actions to prove individual worth are clear as glass and in one thousand years will remain the same.

 

Depth of comprehension? LMAO!!!!!!

I bought Ron Paul's book, End The Fed, and I was not disappointed: I marked up every page pointing out fallacies and examples of the exact opposite of his points and things that were just stupid. Granted, I worked a long career where I used economics extensively, and not in an abstract way, but in real terms where if I was incorrect, my predictions were off and money was on the line, and potentially my career as well. But I was also always a contrarian hippie who believes that everyone should be free to act until it infringes upon someone else. (And by the way, my predictions had a very good track record of being on the mark).

I knew from listening to Ron Paul boast about his intelligence in economic subjects, while he spewed out things directly from the oldest and biggest conspiracy theory ever created to make many people rich (just not the ones buying into the fallacies)---the gold and inflation stories of the so-called Swiss economists, that he was either an idiot, a scammer, or both. Talk about exploitation at its finest. These 19th century Swiss Economists were paid to get people to buy and hold gold in Swiss Banks, and they created a narrative filled with historical misrepresentation that was incredibly easy to copy and get rich off of. If I was a dishonest person, I could have pumped out hundreds of Get-Rich-Quick books starting in the 70's and still up to today, getting people to buy gold because of the worthless dollar, but most of all to buy my books and my newsletters! And everyone makes money--the futures brokers, the traders, the gold dealers, the Swiss Banks, the mining companies, the jewelry industry, the politicians that exploit these stories for political power... (Notice I didn't mention the people that bought gold? If they were smart enough to trade---they could have made some big money----but they were told to buy and hold, and many of them were buying near the tops of the swings, not at the bottom. Oh well.) I would have made a killing off of book sales---but I am honest and have an aversion to exploiting people.

Rather than a depth of comprehension, I would argue that it requires an ignorance of economics and history in an economic context. Granted, Ron Paul expects his readers to have just enough comprehension of economics to buy into his narrative, just like all the other scammers that use these stories. He wants people to have a rudimentary understanding of inflation for example, so then he, like all the other scammers that do this, can tell you that, inflation is a growing money supply, and that a growing money supply represents devaluation of that currency and destroys the buying power of its citizens. They don't want you to know that a growing economy is actually dependent on a growing population which requires a growing money supply, which in turn, in a healthy economy, results in rising prices and rising incomes, without a damaging loss of buying power and, more importantly, without a massive and unfair transfer of wealth from the regular citizens and the poor to the wealthy.

In other words, to buy into Ron Paul, and so much of this other libertarian stuff, you have to be smart enough to buy into the programming, but not smart enough to question the fallacies. For example, you need to know what the gold standard is and then he can tell you that deflation is good, and the dollar is worthless. You can't be so smart that you would say, 'Wait, deflation is worse than inflation because it only really happens when the economy is so bad that demand has dropped to near zero. Imagine if you had a factory that sold canned food for 1.00. But then the economy fell into depression and the people did not have money so the cans weren't selling. You dropped the price to .90, then .80, finally at .50 you were able to sell a fair amount of cans, but now at these prices you couldn't pay for the ingredients and your workers, so you dropped wages, which only aggravated the situation, because now they had less money to spend. Everyone else had to do the same thing so once again your cans weren't selling, and you had to drop prices again. Soon not only can you not pay for the ingredients or workers, but also your loans, rents, and so forth. You have to shut down. That is exactly what happens in a depression. Ron Paul does not want you to be smart enough to say, 'Actually since we moved off of the gold standard, we have not had an actual case of deflation, which is a very good thing, and that the gold standard actually created a cycle of deflation because it retards and restrains growth.' Instead these guys want you to preach to the world how cheap the Model T was fresh off the factory floor and not think about how small our economy was, and our population, and therefore the wages of the Ford workers, and a gallon of milk and a house and so forth. Or that back then, when Americans were much more self-efficient and able to survive on their own with their own repairs and gardens and chicken coups and so forth, that crippling depressions were a fairly regular thing.

Ron Paul wants you to believe that banks should not loan you money to buy a house, loans they earn interest off of, but instead should make money by charging fees, and everything will be great, and the banks will be on their best behavior. He doesn't want you to point out that companies that specialize in lending are always more expensive to borrow through than banks, and that, in an environment where banks make tons of money through all kinds of things other than fees, they are still so greedy as to, for example, charge people $5.00 to cash a check written off of one of their accounts if that person does not have an account with them.

Look at America's incredibly profitable health care, and our for-profit prisons, or the fact that American CEO's now make 360 times what the average employee makes, and tell me again how libertarianism is going to make a great wonderful society for all of us. US healthcare is so greedy and profitable that we have people dying on a daily basis just trying to make their asthma inhaler or insulin stretch to their next payday. The US is the only country where thousands and thousands of people are losing their houses and filing bankruptcy each month in order to pay for an operation or other healthcare service. The US is the only first world nation without universal healthcare and our supposedly GREAT healthcare is terrible. (I've lived abroad for many years in several countries and know what good healthcare is!) Our prisons are making life miserable for the families of countless inmates who now have to pay for the most basic of services such as just talking with their locked up loved one. And the US has the most people incarcerated, especially on a per capita basis, of any country in the world, and its all for money. Has anything improved for all the money these families now have to shell out? No, in fact there are many cases where the quality of life for the inmates has gone down! And what about those CEO's? There was a time not so long ago (in my lifetime) when if the average worker and a CEO worked for a full month, in terms of the CEO's pay, the average worker would get the equivalent of 1 or even 1 1/2 days pay, while the CEO got a whole 30 days of pay. Today it is a matter of the CEO and the average employee working a full year, and while the average worker gets 1 day of pay, the CEO gets the full year.

I have a friend who is a staunch libertarian. He insists that the very wealthy are generally very good people and inherently helpful and generous. My career involved a lot of extremely wealthy people, and I have told him that, yes, many of them are very friendly people, as long as you don't get between them and their wealth and power. If they are such wonderful people, who collectively own more wealth than the rest of the world combined, why is it that tonight over 690 Million starving people will once again go to sleep without any food. It is no secret that any one of the 1% could easily feed these people and still be incredibly rich with barely even a dent to their wealth and yet nothing happens. So how is it that a Libertarian level of Laissez-Faire Capitalism is going to be equitable for even our middle class Americans? I mean, seriously, how could anyone expect anything good from a movement that wants Ayn Rand as their patron Saint as she preaches loud and clear that altruism is the worst sin.

Now you could argue that I have a closed mind, to which I would answer that I am always questioning, and I am always open to new ideas. And we definitely are in need of new ideas before capitalism consumes itself in a greed-crazed frenzy of gluttony perpetrated by an elite and very small minority on the rest of mankind. But Libertarianism has some very serious philosophical and economic fundamental problems it needs to resolve, which history, not abstract theory, points out to us. Until these problems are solved, it is nothing more than a utopian idealism with which the real world answers, 'Don't be stupid.'

As far as looking at Ron Paul with an open mind, when I first heard him speak, and I thought that he seemed intelligent and new, I listened with an open mind. But at some early point it became obvious that it was like trying to listen to someone talk about a flat earth with an open mind, while understanding geodesic navigation. In other words, if I continued to keep an open mind, I would be a moron in complete denial of everything I have experienced and much of what I know.

 

I thought all young males liked fast cars and loose women then some of them grow up

 

Wow!!! I WAS AN ECONOMIST for over 25 years and your points are right on. I was working with income and wealth distribution before that consummate snake oil salesman RR rode into town, sold many his miracle cure, and started the massive redistribution of wealth upward. It was as if the distribution data hit a brick wall and started its upward path of tears.
It seems as if the wealthy never tire of more, and more, and more. As for as the for profit prison system, I volunteered for a group collecting and sending books to prisoners in Texas. Every American should hang their head in shame that such a cruel private prison system is allowed to operate. I saw the letters and pictures from prisoners. Nothing in economics condones the craziest behavior except those classical economists who surfed on a tide of child labor, slavery of many sorts, and conspicuous consumption of the wealthy.

 

So this is your list of the things that are ruining America?

• the envious who want to disincentive people to work hard to be rich. In a country where Americans in the top 1% of incomes now average 39% more money, the bottom 90%, and the top 10% average more than 9 times as much as the bottom 90%, and income disparities are growing year to year, it's hard to see what more incentives the rich need. It's a disincentive to the poor to work hard to be rich, since the barriers to such a goal are formidable Multiple Barriers to Economic Opportunity for the “Truly” Disadvantaged and Vulnerable on JSTOR Barriers To Social Mobility In American Society | Researchomatic
  Multiple Barriers to Economic Opportunity for the “Truly” Disadvantaged and Vulnerable on JSTOR

 

Wrat

I can only repeat that you could answer it by explain what you do mean – if that isn’t your view what is it?

You seem to be arguing for an equivalence between any type of ‘selfishness’

That for example someone murdering their mother to gain a house as inheritance is equivalent to someone looking after their mother selling the house to pay for a good residential home so she can be looked after and spending time money and energy so make her happy until she dies natural – because while one gained the hose the other got a ‘good feeling’ from been kind.

In political terms the person that votes for policies they know will cause others hardship (even death) because they will gain from tax cuts and someone that votes to increase their taxes to relieve others hardships are the same because one gets more money and the other gets a ‘good feeling’ from creating a better society for everyone.