As a young person do you feel disenfranchised by the two major parties? (1 Viewer)

[Slidey]

why does stupidity deserve respect.

they want to ruin Australia

i don't want Australia to be a shit hole

any questions?

My question is why don't you know what you're talking about?

I want you to prove your claim that the Greens are out to destroy Australia.

 

[SylviaB]

shut-up, your knowledge of my political beliefs is based entirely on a couple of posts in this thread. i don't agree with you and more importantly: i don't give a fuck.

The fact that you think the free makret creates "severe inequality" is more than enough to demonstrate your lack of understanding of economics.

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

The claim that the free market will solve environmental problems is the ultimate Libertarian extremist irony.

Well it will solve SOME environmental problems, particularly with respect to degredation of land and waterways which are capable of being privately owned. Turns out people look after their own property.

I agree the market will do little to prevent environmental damage to the atmosphere and the oceans.

However, the government has also failed miserably in this regard, and has contributed substantially to the problem by subsidizing the roads and the use of automobiles and by funding the horrifyingly destructive "military industrial complex."

For the thousandth time:

WE ARE NOT CLAIMING LIBERTARIANISM IS SOME MAGIC SOLUTION TO ALL OF THE WORLDS PROBLEMS. ALL WE ARE SAYING IS THAT IT IS THE BEST POSSIBLE CHOICE OF IMPERFECT SYSTEMS, AND THAT IT IS SUPERIOR TO GOVERNMENT.

 

[Slidey]

Well it will solve SOME environmental problems, particularly with respect to degredation of land and waterways which are capable of being privately owned. Turns out people look after their own property.

I agree the market will do little to prevent environmental damage to the atmosphere and the oceans.

However, the government has also failed miserably in this regard, and has contributed substantially to the problem by subsidizing the roads and the use of automobiles and by funding the horrifyingly destructive "military industrial complex."

For the thousandth time:

WE ARE NOT CLAIMING LIBERTARIANISM IS SOME MAGIC SOLUTION TO ALL OF THE WORLDS PROBLEMS. ALL WE ARE SAYING IS THAT IT IS THE BEST POSSIBLE CHOICE OF IMPERFECT OUTCOME, AND THAT IT IS SUPERIOR TO GOVERNMENT.

Yeah, OK, I'm cool with the notion it'll solve SOME problems, and in fact I just had this conversation with Graney. But it's no cure-all tonic.

 

[Slidey]

The fact that you think the free makret creates "severe inequality" is more than enough to demonstrate your lack of understanding of economics.

The free market (in its purest form) isn't too dissimilar to social Darwinism. Unless you have some basic safety nets (welfare structures), it WILL create inequality. That's how the market works. The market doesn't redistribute wealth to those most in need, it redistributes it to those most able to work it efficiently.

This might be mathematically beautiful, but it is not egalitarian or fair.

At least, that's how the market works right now. In the coming ages, this may change due to scientific and technological breakthroughs, but until then...

 

[SylviaB]

The claim that the free market will solve environmental problems is the ultimate Libertarian extremist irony.

[youtube]XMxgYY_q-AI[/youtube]

[youtube]O_15rFkk1kE[/youtube]

[youtube]DmiknXoow7c[/youtube]

[youtube]tNYdlkNnrgE[/youtube]

There, a couple of hours worth on how free markets can solve environmental problems.

Nobody claimed it would magically fixed everything; but the ideas that:

-We need government to protect teh environment

- The government is actually capable of protecting the environment (without destroying standard of living OR just full stop)

-On a free makret environmental problems couldn't be solved


are bogus

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

The free market (in its purest form) isn't too dissimilar to social Darwinism. Unless you have some basic safety nets (welfare structures), it WILL create inequality. That's how the market works. The market doesn't redistribute wealth to those most in need, it redistributes it to those most able to work it efficiently.

This might be mathematically beautiful, but it is not egalitarian or fair.

At least, that's how the market works right now. In the coming ages, this may change due to scientific and technological breakthroughs, but until then...

charity - Google Search

 

[Slidey]

I didn't know YouTube even let you upload videos longer than 10 minutes. I'll watch them eventually. I have to admit I'm very curious to hear the perspective of a strong libertarian who is also a strong environmentalist.

 

[Slidey]

charity - Google Search

Charity isn't universal.

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

There, a couple of hours worth on how free markets can solve environmental problems.

Nobody claimed it would magically fixed everything; but the ideas that:

-We need government to protect teh environment

- The government is actually capable of protecting the environment (without destroying standard of living OR just full stop)

-On a free makret environmental problems couldn't be solved


are bogus

Hmmm, good point, and it relates to the issue of helping the poor as well.

Neither anarcho-capitalism nor any form of governments gaurantee any particular outcome. It depends on what the majority of people want.

If the majority of people genuinely believe in helping the poor, or conservation, it will happen under either system. The only difference is that without the government it will happen much more efficiently.

 

[SylviaB]

The free market (in its purest form) isn't too dissimilar to social Darwinism. Unless you have some basic safety nets (welfare structures), it WILL create inequality. That's how the market works.

1. Complete equality is a stupid idea. people don't deserve the same amount of money. If I'm better at supplying demands then I deserve a higher income.

2. Government helps the super rich become and stay super rich, stop the working rich (i.e. doctors engineers etc) from using their wealth in a way that would benefit society, and make the poor dependant upon government and stops them from lifting themselves out of poverty.

3. last year americans donated 300 BILLION dollars to charity. With no taxes, higher incomes and a greater need for charity (i.e. a stateless society), then this would obviously be an even greater sum.

The market doesn't redistribute wealth to those most in need, it redistributes it to those most able to work it efficiently.

If an economic system doesn't distribute wealth to those who earn it i.e. by supplying demand, then they won't try to earn it and thus there will be no wealth to distribute.

At least, that's how the market works right now. In the coming ages, this may change due to scientific and technological breakthroughs, but until then...

We DONT HAVE A FREE MARKET right now, so this claim is meaningless.

 

[ClockworkSoldier]

I don't like, nor trust either side. They're set too far apart, yes.

 

[jennyfromdabloc]

Charity isn't universal.

Neither is government supposedly "universal" welfare.

Those who happen to be born in developed countries get more money on welfare than people working 70 hours a week in poor countries.

I find it sickening that our idea of welfare is to pay bogans to sit around drinking and smoking while children are literally starving to death and dying from easily preventable diseases.

If lefties where serious about universal welfare and healthcare, whatever, they would support massive transfers of wealth from the developed world to the developing world.

 

[Graney]

The market doesn't redistribute wealth to those most in need, it redistributes it to those most able to work it efficiently.

Democratic states don't redistribute wealth to those most in need, nor do they distribute it to those most deserving, they horde and redistribute wealth to those who happen by chance to be born within their arbitrary borders, often at the expense of violently seizing that wealth from the unlucky and truly vulnerable people who live under foreign states.

Dom kind of said it.

If lefties where serious about universal welfare and healthcare, whatever, they would support massive transfers of wealth from the developed world to the developing world.

Except massive transfers of wealth to the third world are a terrible idea that would only serve to entrench disadvantage (I grok that he was only proposing this as a philosophically consistent idea for flawed leftist ideology).

What would be fairer, opening borders and allowing all the worlds poor to compete on a fair playing field for limited resources, or maintaining the privileged welfare state for fat westerners?
Extending western style welfare to an unlimited population would be disastrous, so these policies are mutually exclusive.


On another train of thought, I feel that the existence of states does have environmental advantages.

Here's a typical case:
Cray fishermen in claws of a dilemma | The Australian

The fisherman aren't being proactive to protect their industry, as in many cases of free market actors exploiting a resource, they don't act rationally for their long term interest (possibly due to diffusion of responsibility, "if I don't fish it, someone else will"). There are no barriers to interested environmental groups buying up fishing licences, forcing the catch down- yet they don't, presumably because they can't compete?

What would happen to this catchment without the state intervening? I think the contemporary Australian state does more good than harm for most sectors of the environment.

 

[SylviaB]

Overfishing in a stateless society


The way you prevent overfishing in a stateless society is the same way you prevent any crime: make it illegal with explicit punishments and/or the threat of outlawing. Outlawing means to set a person outside of the law, that is they have no legal protections if any crime is committed against them. So that is very simple, once we have the basics of free-market law laid down, you just punish overfishing as a criminal offense. The difficulty is calculation. That is, calculating how much is being fished and how much should be fished to maintain the integrity of the global fish stock.

There are 4 players in my solution to the problem of overfishing, and in the text version of this book I have a diagram. The 4 players are:

1. The Law Agencies
2. The ITQ Agencies (ITQ stands for individual transferable quota)
3. The Harbors
4. The Fishers

The Law agencies approves the ITQ agencies. This is because overfishing is a legal issue, and the legal agency is that which prosecutes the crime of overfishing. The ITQ agency does all of the calculating for the Law Agency.

The ITQ agencies must come up with a consensus of how many of each type of fish can be fished in each general location. They must deal with overlapping migratory patterns and all of that stuff that is apparently complex. Once consensus is reached, however it is reached - perhaps an annual meeting or even a series of virtual meetings, that is the quota.

ITQ agencies would have to figure out how to pay for the scientific research, and because the Law Agencies and the ITQ agencies are interdependent, the Law Agency would not have an incentive to approve an ITQ agency that wasn't paying their "fair share" for scientific research on the fish populations that cluster of ITQ agencies happen to monitor. And the Law Agencies are interdependent on each other for recognition, and so a Law Agency that approved an ITQ agency that didn't pay for scientific research but used the research of others would face sanction from the other Law Agencies - such as penalties against the customers of he "rogue" law agency in matters of disputes between members of different law agencies.

The ITQ quotas are then sold off to the harbors. Harbors bid on the fish quotas for their respective areas. This will result in the harbors that believe they can catch the most fish bidding for the most credits. The harbors then sell these ITQ credits to the fishers. The fishers then own the fish they catch. Once the fish are caught and the credits are deducted, the fishermen then own the fish outright and can do with them what they please.

Each region has ITQ credits for each fish type. For example "Hudson bay Halibut" or "Chesapeake Bay Tuna" or whatever fish are in those regions. Each harbor that takes in fish must be approved by an ITQ agency or else be outlawed. An outlawed harbor is open for pillaging. This is where our old enemy the corporation actually becomes useful, because the harbor can be outlawed without outlawing the individual employees, and so the harbor will be pillaged without the employees getting massacred.

The harbors are all connected and the fish that go through the quotas are all databased. This can be done by weight or number, however these things are done, I'm not an expert on the sundries of fishing metrics. The fish-counting would be done by the ITQ agents at the harbors. The most efficient fishermen would be the most willing to pay more for the ITQ credits.

Harbors would bid on credits from the ITQ agencies. However, they could buy credits from any ITQ agency that is approved by a legal agency, and so the cost of the ITQ credits for the harbors would gradually approach the cost of counting fish at the harbors plus the research pool cost. The ITQ agencies would be competing for business by harbors who choose to buy credits from them, but they also have to do their job well enough to be approved by the legal agency.

If the ITQ agencies overestimate the number fish that can be fished, they will risk having their approval from the legal agencies suspended, as environmental activist groups could file a lawsuit against them for "enabling the crime of overfishing". If they underestimate the number of fish that can be fished, then new ITQ agencies will come on line, and if the new ITQ agencies are formed by prestigious individuals they should have no trouble getting initial legal approval.

The initial imposition of this plan would not be difficult except as a matter of scale (that is, there are a lot of harbors in the world). Though as integrated as fish populations are, you can still regulate discrete areas of ocean, they just happen to be rather large areas. The first ITQs I envision would be privatized government agencies that already do this sort of thing, just as the first legal agencies would probably be privatized government legal agencies.

Cartelization among the fishers would be systematically unlikely to succeed because if they did manage to cartelize for one fishing season, that would drive profits in the fishing industry up, resulting in new fishers bidding up the fishing credits from the harbors, until new fishers came in to undercut, and this would continue until the cartelization ceased and prices went back to the normal rate.

Who will oppose the ITQ system?

Short-sighted fishermen
Short-sighted consumers
Fish-farms

Who will support the ITQ system?

Far-sighted fishermen
Far-sighted consumers
Environmentally concerned people

The only disharmony I can envision is with the harbors. There is only so much space to build a harbor, and so they can easily cartelize and sell ITQ credits to fishermen at the monopoly rate. The natural regulation against this would be indirect competitors: if wild fish becomes too expensive as a result of harbor cartelization, more people will buy from fish-farms, or just buy other types of food. And harbor monopolization is systematically unlikely because of the firms being bought out raising their buyout-price as the would-be monopolist gets closer and closer to a monopoly, and cartels are inherently unstable. Because of these mitigating factors I will say that the harbors will behave in a slightly cartelistic manner.

But other than that overfishing does not seem too difficult.

 

[-Lemon-]

Overfishing in a stateless society


The way you prevent overfishing in a stateless society is the same way you prevent any crime: make it illegal with explicit punishments and/or the threat of outlawing. Outlawing means to set a person outside of the law, that is they have no legal protections if any crime is committed against them. So that is very simple, once we have the basics of free-market law laid down, you just punish overfishing as a criminal offense. The difficulty is calculation. That is, calculating how much is being fished and how much should be fished to maintain the integrity of the global fish stock.

There are 4 players in my solution to the problem of overfishing, and in the text version of this book I have a diagram. The 4 players are:

1. The Law Agencies
2. The ITQ Agencies (ITQ stands for individual transferable quota)
3. The Harbors
4. The Fishers

The Law agencies approves the ITQ agencies. This is because overfishing is a legal issue, and the legal agency is that which prosecutes the crime of overfishing. The ITQ agency does all of the calculating for the Law Agency.

The ITQ agencies must come up with a consensus of how many of each type of fish can be fished in each general location. They must deal with overlapping migratory patterns and all of that stuff that is apparently complex. Once consensus is reached, however it is reached - perhaps an annual meeting or even a series of virtual meetings, that is the quota.

ITQ agencies would have to figure out how to pay for the scientific research, and because the Law Agencies and the ITQ agencies are interdependent, the Law Agency would not have an incentive to approve an ITQ agency that wasn't paying their "fair share" for scientific research on the fish populations that cluster of ITQ agencies happen to monitor. And the Law Agencies are interdependent on each other for recognition, and so a Law Agency that approved an ITQ agency that didn't pay for scientific research but used the research of others would face sanction from the other Law Agencies - such as penalties against the customers of he "rogue" law agency in matters of disputes between members of different law agencies.

The ITQ quotas are then sold off to the harbors. Harbors bid on the fish quotas for their respective areas. This will result in the harbors that believe they can catch the most fish bidding for the most credits. The harbors then sell these ITQ credits to the fishers. The fishers then own the fish they catch. Once the fish are caught and the credits are deducted, the fishermen then own the fish outright and can do with them what they please.

Each region has ITQ credits for each fish type. For example "Hudson bay Halibut" or "Chesapeake Bay Tuna" or whatever fish are in those regions. Each harbor that takes in fish must be approved by an ITQ agency or else be outlawed. An outlawed harbor is open for pillaging. This is where our old enemy the corporation actually becomes useful, because the harbor can be outlawed without outlawing the individual employees, and so the harbor will be pillaged without the employees getting massacred.

The harbors are all connected and the fish that go through the quotas are all databased. This can be done by weight or number, however these things are done, I'm not an expert on the sundries of fishing metrics. The fish-counting would be done by the ITQ agents at the harbors. The most efficient fishermen would be the most willing to pay more for the ITQ credits.

Harbors would bid on credits from the ITQ agencies. However, they could buy credits from any ITQ agency that is approved by a legal agency, and so the cost of the ITQ credits for the harbors would gradually approach the cost of counting fish at the harbors plus the research pool cost. The ITQ agencies would be competing for business by harbors who choose to buy credits from them, but they also have to do their job well enough to be approved by the legal agency.

If the ITQ agencies overestimate the number fish that can be fished, they will risk having their approval from the legal agencies suspended, as environmental activist groups could file a lawsuit against them for "enabling the crime of overfishing". If they underestimate the number of fish that can be fished, then new ITQ agencies will come on line, and if the new ITQ agencies are formed by prestigious individuals they should have no trouble getting initial legal approval.


Who will oppose the ITQ system?

Short-sighted fishermen
Short-sighted consumers
Fish-farms

Who will support the ITQ system?

Far-sighted fishermen
Far-sighted consumers
Environmentally concerned people

The only disharmony I can envision is with the harbors. There is only so much space to build a harbor, and so they can easily cartelize and sell ITQ credits to fishermen at the monopoly rate. The natural regulation against this would be indirect competitors: if wild fish becomes too expensive as a result of harbor cartelization, more people will buy from fish-farms, or just buy other types of food. And harbor monopolization is systematically unlikely because of the firms being bought out raising their buyout-price as the would-be monopolist gets closer and closer to a monopoly, and cartels are inherently unstable. Because of these mitigating factors I will say that the harbors will behave in a slightly cartelistic manner.

But other than that overfishing does not seem too difficult.

a nauseating piece of logic

please make it stop.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Welfare is a fucking scourge.

I just fucking hate the government telling me what I can and can't do. I work two fucking jobs as well as studying and if I want to spend my money on getting as fucked as I can I should be able too. (ps Im drunk)

 

[russs]

Lefties don't achieve anything but throwing money at feel-good initiatives and awareness programs. And to throw money around we need to collect a little bit more.

The money that has been already spent needlessly on shelved programs could be better spent to get nuclear energy started in Australia. Meanwhile, we'll be paying more for electricity bills for no reason.

You can be all 'progressive' and smoke pot all you want, but if you want to keep the money that you earn in your pocket, be able to buy and drive a car and generally live in a quality western society you need to vote right.

 

[peikoff]

Lol at people who advocate private security firms as a replacement for government

 

[scaredytiger]

I don't have time to read the entire thread, but my vote will go to the Greens.

Mainly because I've actually read their policies and they promote transparency in governing. Also, they directly oppose censorship of the internet.