Ron Paul wins presidential straw poll at CPAC

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Ok, so there is a marginal difference between the rich and the poor. This still doesn't mean that progressive taxation should be done, nor does it mean that flat taxes wouldn't have benefits.


Umm.... all the rich benefit from are the basic frameworks that society requires. They don't use the public education system. They don't use the public transportation system. They don't need most of the transfer payments. Really, they benefit less in many ways. The only way you can say they benefit more is to make the argument that society needs laws and that the rich have more therefore they benefit more. The issue is that in terms of actual services provided used, I don't see much indicating that the services the rich need cost dramatically more than the services the poor need, and really it seems reversed to me, and that a cost-per-use system would actually be regressive.


I don't like regressive taxes either. I don't like most elements of the tax system. I want the issue scrapped. That's why I say flat tax it all, and slash away everything else.


I don't know what you are talking about. Are you talking about reducing taxes on capital? I actually understand some elements of this and don't think it should be done.


I don't see your argument here. The real variable on looting companies is going to be institutional matters on management, more so than tax rates. If a company is managed for long-term welfare then looting will decrease, but if a person is only in a company a short period of time, then future profits will of course be ignored. Now, the only thing I can see argued here is that higher tax rates decrease winner-take-all markets for executives, but even then I don't see how tax rates can outright stop this kind of phenomenon.

I also support offshoring when it really cuts costs.


Society is a construct, and no, people are not slaves to the plans of social planners. If people "owe their fortune to society" then nobody has the right to even complain about 100% tax rates or even totalitarianism. The issue is that this implicitly invokes a social construct, which I consider not only wrong, but stupid. The fact of the matter is that if freedom is anything to talk about, then just as it appeals to the social issues, it must also appeal to the economic issues, as the same kind of argument of "Speech laws must be seen as a way to regulate society. This is not some morality game about "silencing" people. Those who have the ability to speak are indebted to society. They would not be able to say what they would without the education systems of society and the laws that society created."

Honestly, I doubt this perk is really that big. I mean, the US doesn't tax other countries, and trade-wars are the real reason to no seek to piss anybody off with bad trade-policy. Shipping protection tends to have some problems with excludability if you are just angry at one nation. You'd have to be angry with one region more, or you'd have to take a very aggressive action to start boarding ships. As it stands, I don't see the benefits.


I don't see this as a major perk. Many nations are capable of patrolling large stretches of their own waters. We don't even need a superpower doing all of the work. I doubt that delegation will be a humongous issue either.

I mean, all of these political considerations are nice and all, but honestly, shipping protection will likely never ever ever become as big of an issue as the generic trade issues that most nations already deal with. This is simply because shipping protection is much more clear-cut. If anything ever happens in shipping protection, it will likely on correspond to a current trade issue. So... I don't see any of your worries. Maybe I am missing something but it seems like worrying over nothing.

If things remained stagnant perhaps and nothing major happens in the next few hundred years - no major wars, or major changes in the alignment of certain countries, if for that long all we have to worry about is the last remnants of an utterly defeated ultra-right Islamist threat; then there'd be absolutely nothing to worry about.

The issue is likely much more than two-fold but the two angles that I would focus on are control over the seas and of course the obvious, whether people like it or not, the U.S.'s ability to police the areas where its assets are or other regions of the globe where its allies are under attack.

Part of what you're saying here also has to be taken in consideration this way; the U.S. control of the Atlantic and Pacific not seeming to benefit it in major ways; is that because it doesn't have the potential to or simply because the U.S. has been a capitalistic democratic society that believes that laissez faire trade (outside of drugs and human trafficking) is a good thing that happens to be highly beneficial to itself. Just looking around the world stage you can see a very wide and diverse variety of opinions on what's best for the globe let alone one's own country. In that sense with another country in power over shipping routes and the oceans, especially with a political philosophy somewhat alien to our own, its not too difficult I think to imagine a very different sort of world than what we live in currently in terms of power structure, ideology, etc.

All things are likely to remain relatively stagnant. History has already come pretty close to the end.


Under attack from what? Martians? The US cannot stop terrorism through conventional military methods as terrorism is not a conventional military tactic. Conventional methods though are better stopped with mutually assured destruction.


I don't see much way to make major differences. Our basic ideology is the only really successful one. Most people are going to broadly accept it over some period of time. The only threat is potentially China, which seems to more likely be politically realist. Even then though, China's ideology will change and it will always be constrained by other nations. By the time it starts taking dominance, the US will be significantly weaker than it is now. If the worry is Chinese actions, then the only solution is to promote Indian economic strength to counter-balance China.

What are you suggesting then? Christian Apocalypse/Armageddon or perhaps 2012 with the sun passing through Ophiuchus? Without those things, with a going time line, we've got as much time for more major wars, huge international conflicts as is allotted to our existence as a race. The weapons might become cleaner and more often non-lethal but still, I'm amazed when people seem to think that we've arrived at the end of history.



I'd reply to this the same way - terrorism isn't the last and ultimate problem by any stretch. There are all kinds of different ideologies and geopolitical issues out there in motion, they'll always find different motivations for war when swaying the public but most often it really comes down to a country's ongoing interests regarding its health and existence.



If we have problems or big wars in the future I really doubt it will be China, partly because we make their power and capabilities to be much more than what they are, they're topography is terrible, the most they have is some booming industry on the sea coasts, mostly on Sam Walton, where if Walmart stops outsourcing to China they're already be losing a significant chunk of GDP. Its such a disconnected country that it has an incredibly hard time staying together let alone waging wars on anyone.

Actually it is a reference to a book I've only read about.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_End_of ... e_Last_Man

The argument is that history ends with the dominance of liberal democracy. I haven't read the book though, and I don't really care about the contents either. It was really a weird comment in some sense.

I am actually quite surprised when people don't see it. We haven't had a major war in a long-time, and we can't have a major war ever until nuclear weaponry is invalidated. Additionally, trade ties have gotten dramatically closer, meaning that wars are more difficult in the modern era simply due to the economic distress caused by the attempt. I mean, I am quite surprised at people who DON'T think we've arrived at the end of history. I mean, maybe there are going to be political changes, but I think foreign policy realism is over without foes and that foes have essentially ceased to exist.


Motivations for war in the face of total annihilation???? MAD means the end of war. If your enemy can destroy you with a button, then who is going to play with fire? Additionally, country interests are now a lot more interdependent. This is an age of trade and economic growth, and war interferes with both of these. The only interest left is likely oil, and frankly even that has to fade away at some point or else society collapses and military power is certainly not going to end fossil fuel dependence.


But there ARE NO OTHER POWERS!! !! Who are you going to posit? Russia? They haven't had the major growth China is seeing and they certainly don't have the population, and they would be opposed by everybody else if they even tried. The EU??? They're an economic union, not a political union? Some South American country? We can take them out without a sweat. Africa? Even poorer. India? They're not better than China.

I mean, you say "potential wars" but there isn't anybody! The USSR collapsed. The middle east isn't a military power. Mongolian hordes went away hundreds of years ago. Mexico is our trade partner. Canada is peaceful. Japan doesn't have a military at all.

I mean, don't mumble about "all sorts of ideologies and geopolitical motions", show me some actual threat on any horizon where we will have a war that will be fought with conventional forces and where American technological dominance won't automatically deliver it victory regardless of military size. I don't see anything even close. At all.

I suppose I've been reading books too - had quite a bout with Orwell about it already though:

http://www.amazon.com/Next-100-Years-Fo ... 381&sr=8-1

Even if his literal predictions were, per say, garbage he has one point in particular that I'd agree with; there's a few too many variables at play for most people to have an accurate imagination of what will happen in the future between nations. It seems from his analysis, and I saw this from John Ralston Saul in Voltaire's Bastards, that our imaginations for core cause and effect let alone resolving conflicts is still abysmal and we have a lot of false confidence placed in detached floating logic of what we see or think reality should be (statistically) and what we think it means to 'us'; reality is still quite well hidden from most people in that sense. It also seems like, with all of our new technology, we've entered a phase of thought where - since conventional wisdom is below us - we'll likely have to relearn all kinds of historical lessons and 'touch the hot stove' just to prove that its still relevant as it seems like a lot of events too old to be on video seem to a lot of people like they're too far past to be of any relevance.

That said though, in reading about and hearing George Friedman's predictions and analysis of various countries I'd really doubt that his predictions are all crap. A few things might not happen (the situation he supposes in the 2080's and 90's could likely be resolved or have their course changed by events in the 2010's and 20's) but overall what he's suggesting in terms of how nations interact and how 'geopolitical predestiny' effects countries seems to make a lot of sense.

I am not surprised, I would bet that Orwell would agree with me.

I certainly can't talk about something I haven't read, and honestly, the thing is that I hold to a world where people are still ruled by their guts, so I doubt that we are talking about a world where one side is off in la-la land, and the other side is realistic. I just think that the institutional structure of the world doesn't favor war where powers are involved, only petty skirmishes. This doesn't seem irrational in the slightest to me either.

I'll add one more thing, from the understanding I've obtained about geopolitics, it seems like a good analogy for relative world peace is to good weather. Its something where you can enjoy sunny skies for a while but, when a few variables get tweaked and you're back to clouds, thunderstorms, hail, etc.. Maintaining world peace, while there's nothing wrong with striving for it, seems about as realistic as controlling the earth's climate to prevent future ice ages.

All I have to say on that is we'll see. I just tend to think that the movements of entire nations are much larger and more unconscious than the individual people in them, there seems to be almost too many dynamics at play in the world - most of which it seems are only on the fleeting edged of our understanding - for us to be in such a state of mastery in this century. We could perhaps reach a point of no war, my best guess on gut intuition, thinking about cultural changes even at our current accelerated pace, I'm still thinking another thousand years or so at a minimum, perhaps even two or three. What I really worry about though is our current 'know-it-all' take on things, IMO that's quite dangerous and I worry about what kinds of problems that could hatch in the next few decades for us.

That the triumph of liberal democracy is the end of history? Hardly.

Well, you know I am not being incredibly literal with "liberal democracy". I really meant the war issue. I thought you would side more with neoliberal international foreign policy ideas.

Actually, I don't think I ever meant "democracy" so much as capitalism. Just to clarify.

Ah, OK. Well, I will agree that a full-scale war between major powers (on the level of WWI or WWII, where nations were fighting for their lives) is currently impossible. What will come in 20 or 50 years, I can't predict.

I'm a history major, so consider this perspective: after every major paradigm-shifting war, the victorious powers come at the conclusion of the war to impose a system intended to maintain peace and the balance of power. It succeeds for a time and then breaks down. The Concert of Europe, the League of Nations, the dominance of the US after WWII and the Cold War, and countless other examples. We see it over and over again. There is relatively little justification to claim that this time, we've broken the pattern.

Unless multiple nations learn how to stop an atomic threat, I can predict that a major war is very very unlikely.


MAD. Boom. We've broken the pattern. As it stands though, the only thing I can see to undermine this current state of affairs is a major economic problem. Even then unless we undercut MAD, we still won't have a war. But still, I think that the basic incentives no longer favor war at any point in time, and that these incentives aren't based upon the particular decisions of a given nation such as with the pre-WW1 system's chain of alliances.

I mean, even for a Cold War situation to occur, we have to predict the emergence of other military powers. No other power is likely to emerge any time soon. China comes the closest.

The world is unpredictable. When those hungry things with tentacles and heat beams emerge from their flying saucers we might get a different perspective on history.

I already mentioned the Alien threat. My guess is that if it can cross lightyears of space, it won't be any more hampered by the US having a few bases across the world.