Political & socio-economic nerd-rage thread. page 8

[js290]

[Grok]

The money is debt argument is a fallacy. The argument that you can't have money without debt is also a fallacy.

The US government can wipe off all the debt on the books overnight if it wishes to. It's called defaulting or restructuring the debt. A 100% default is when you just don't pay anything back at all, a restructuring is where both parties agree that you cannot fully pay back the debt, but you try to pay back as much as possible, say fifty cents on the dollar.

To actually pay back the debt is politically untenable because taxes would have to be raised to 100% and the army would have to come in and force everyone to work as slaves in order to pay off foreign bankers. They are trying to do that now in Europe and it's not working out so well. I hear the government in the Netherlands is resigning to the Queen because they don't want to implement the austerity.

Europe will fall apart before their debt is repaid, and there is a good chance that the US will far apart before we repay ours. I think with Obama or Romney in office there is a good chance the US will break apart into sovereign states. Ron Paul, or another minarchist is our only hope of keeping the union together.

If US states started enacting laws to secede and create their own currencies, I don't know if Obama or Romney would follow through with Lincoln's insanity to keep the union together and start killing off Americans in order to force them to use Federal Reserve notes. Perhaps they would, what do you think?

[j3nn]

Please do, I'm like the lone anarchist here amongst a den of statists. I need all the back-up I can get.

You're not alone.

I dont have time to get into it, but most people don't realize that anarchy is peaceful and non-aggressive. It means no rulers, not no rules. The non-aggression principle is promoting goodwill toward others and basically minding your own life until someone requests your presence in theirs. It baffles me why people are so opposed to a free and voluntary society where there are no monopolies on theft and violence. Propaganda has made anarchy out to be a bunch of rabid teenage punks going insane, when it's actually just a logical and peaceful philosophy based on reason and free will.

I'd love to have a civil discussion about it. A voluntary society is far from perfect, there will never be a perfect world so long as humans are... Human. There can only be freedom vs. Tyranny and differing degrees of each. I say zero tyranny is the only fair and humane course of a better society.

[Grok]

You're not alone.

Hi Jenn. I know I'm not alone, but sometimes it feels that way. There is a never ending supply of statists that the public schools keep churning out.

There is a big day for Ron Paul tomorrow here in Nevada. I ended up taking a long nap in the middle of the day today and now I'm up late. But nothing a Starbucks can't fix. Ron Paul will be here speaking tomorrow at our national convention.

In Nevada there is a rule this year which says the delegates have to be bound to Nevada's Presidential beauty contest, but we should be able to change that rule at the convention to unbind those delegates.

I even heard news today that there are rules at the national level which says a state cannot bind any delegates.

[zoebird]

I mostly don't like how you communicate about it. seems to me that whether someone is posting a recipe for gluten free chocolate cake or talking about their new shoes or posting some construct about taking personal responsibility for your own success, it always come up as some sort of statist-slavery accusation.

It's like, jesus, you have a hammer and therefore everything must be nails.

For my own part, I'm not entirely facile with the breadth of material, but I've like RP for a long time, and it got me curious about it all. I have several friends who are in the sovereignty movement, which is great for discussion on different ideologies.

But, on the other side, I really like government -- i think they are interesting human institutions, flawed as they are. Not saying they are at all absolute. It's nearly like studying some interesting creature and it's adaptability.

So, my own opinions run the gammut, and I like to think about ideas, but at the end of the day -- my process is constantly shifting based on what i'm thinking about at a given time.

Turns out that sometimes being a thinker just means you keep on thinking, and not necessarily deciding that one way is the right idea or focus. That is to say, I can agree with logical inferences and philosophies, and likewise I can also disagree with it. Crazy how that works out.

For some reason, that always works out for people as thinking me weak-minded. It actually means I simply have the capacity to think freely on a given topic -- seeing the plus and minuses of various positions.

But, I beg out either way on here. I noticed it basically got nowhere. Even humor about it fell flat. lol

[RitaRose]

I'm still trying to figure out where I stand politically, so bear with me. I got ripped a new one by my brother when I bailed on the Republican party to become a Libertarian. It just felt like one big marketing scam, with a bunch of old money rich guys trying to sell me on working my ass off so they could keep the money Daddy left them and then lay me off when they replaced me with a robot (I wish I were exagerating).

I absolutely love the idea of a minimalist government, but I don't see how a civilization can survive without some government. Maybe it's just where I live, but the average guy is a non-commital wuss and there's a crap ton of people that are just outright messed up. We just had a guy randomly break into a house, beat the crap out of the husband with a claw hammer, rape and kill the wife, then rape and kill the 10-year-old daughter. He was caught because he had previously attempted to rape another woman just a day or two before. Turns out he had beat the crap out of his pregnant 16-year-old girlfriend just before that.

While I would love to think we are all wonderful, intelligent and responsible adults, there will always be people like that guy, and I would have no problem "disposing" of him, quickly and efficiently in self defense, the problem remains that he needs to be captured first (if I don't kill him myself before it happens), we need to make sure we capture the right guy, and I think there's a lot to be said for the judicial system, despite its massive flaws.

In other words, I understand that the system is bloated and severely flawed and in need of a major overhaul (including a whole lot of amputations), but I don't think abandoning the whole thing is going to make for a better world, short term or over the long haul.

Am I missing something? And holy crap, please don't post a 20 minute video link showing me the error of my ways.

[js290]

here is another problem that I think anarchists neglect when they talk about their faith in the market- the percent of people that are willing to take a stand on anything is very much a negligible one. Already there are a lot of things people with wealth can do to generally improve the human condition, and yet they do not. There are too many personal excuses to ignore injustice; if a free market is to provide justice, people are going to have to make sacrifices over matters of principle; they will not. None of the fuckin chubby ghujrati bitch vaisyas are going to stop buying a product because the sellers stole them, or contribute to the security of the people around them with their resources.

What "free markets" are you referring to? Because there's no such thing when the money supply itself is monopolized by a central banking soviet. Money as a marker of debt is not "wealth."

[kenn]

What "free markets" are you referring to? Because there's no such thing when the money supply itself is monopolized by a central banking soviet. Money as a marker of debt is not "wealth."

did you mean currency?

[j3nn]

Hi Jenn. I know I'm not alone, but sometimes it feels that way. There is a never ending supply of statists that the public schools keep churning out.

There is a big day for Ron Paul tomorrow here in Nevada. I ended up taking a long nap in the middle of the day today and now I'm up late. But nothing a Starbucks can't fix. Ron Paul will be here speaking tomorrow at our national convention.

In Nevada there is a rule this year which says the delegates have to be bound to Nevada's Presidential beauty contest, but we should be able to change that rule at the convention to unbind those delegates.

I even heard news today that there are rules at the national level which says a state cannot bind any delegates.

It does feel like we're surrounded by statists and, we pretty much are. Most people are so dependent on the government, they can't see any flaws in it. They build roads (inefficiently), deliver mail (inefficiently), and "keep us safe." But... they also kill millions of people in unnecessary wars, take our property and labor (serfdom), print money (devalue the USD), imprison millions people for victimless "crimes" and have carte blanche access to everything private the 4th amendment was supposed to "protect us from." And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

That's awesome about Ron Paul in Nevada today, I wish you good luck! I am seeing a lot of buzz around Facebook about it being huge days for Nevada and Maine; I'm so excited! I met Ron Paul back in April, it was pretty amazing! Lunch with Ron Paul in Ithaca, NY: Part I | Jenn's Menu & Lifestyle Blog

[js290]

It is even worse when you question those statists, and all of them give you the same answer once you press them enough, "Yes, I know things are fucked up, but I am just once #gender# and god damnit there is nothing I can do about it so I will just go with the flow. It's easier that way"

Every. Single. One.

Every person is thinking the same thing, feeling the same feelings, but they have lost their ability to trust their gut instincts because its been so stamped out of them.

Yep, misery loves company. For me, it all boils down to the principal-agent problem.