Strident Atheists' Pre-Election Poll

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Guys, M_P, AG, Orwell & 91 are all actually Inuyasha trying to undermine the Atheist organization by sowing the seeds of disunity


M_P
He didn't come back for you

This message is brought to you by the non-aligned but somewhat interested but mostly bored party

Neil agrees with me on the necessity of never acquiescing your mind from curiosity and a desire to learn.


[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vrpPPV_yPY[/youtube]

Nobody is power hungry until he gets the power.

*shrug* History shows otherwise. Those with disturbed childhoods tend to be drawn to power most and they tend to start off without that power.

Sure, but they don't show it most of the time.

Yup- I'm totally comfortable with the process and ethic of choosing the lesser of two evils.


And....naturally- "left" and "right" have come to denote and connote completely different things from their original meanings.
I'd consider myself a leftIST libertarian, primarily because I come from a school of libertarian ethics (not to be confused with egoist ethics), as opposed to politics-
my perception is that the "libertarian" political party (in America) is the antithesis of actual libertarianism,
due to their seemingly-religious opposition to corporate regulation, and simultaneous opposition to federal protection of, for instance, abortion rights or gay rights. It seems to me that their idea of individual liberty promotes individual oppression by the STATE as opposed to the FEDERAL government, in addition to unchecked corporatocracy. My libertarianism, then, would be a "purist" form, advocating individual liberty by both opposing the so-called "free" market, AND attempts to define the possession of what I see as basic human rights as being contingent on one's state of residence.

That's true, the meanings of "left" and "right" have shifted.

I can see the distinction between libertarian and egoist, at least I think I can. Most libertarians I know of and respect aren't objectivists, and I think Ayn Rand's philosophy is quite frankly stupid. (**random tangent alert**) I do respect an egoist though, and that's the German philosopher Max Stirner, who was in the same community as Marx(even criticized in Marx's "The German Ideology") and a predecessor of the existentialists. However, while I can see Stirner's basic view as making sense, I end up thinking that his view is way way way too likely to incorporate common-sense "I am being good to others" with egoism, as I think his point stands upon in some sense, the rejection that moral obligations can exist, but he still believes in friends and all that, but he's doing it for himself, but the thing is that a lot of generosity is doing things for others for ourselves anyway. In any case, usually individualist anarchists claim Stirner more than anarcho-capitalists. (**end random tangent**)

I can understand why you might object to a seemingly religious opposition to corporate regulation, often principle trumps sense with a number of libertarians, and often they think they know the economics better than they actually do(see the thread where there was a belief that medicine and grocery stores functioned the same way in the economy). I don't think that states rights ought really be a principle to promote discrimination by states, and I know that this has happened and been stopped by the federal government. (such as with sodomy laws in a number of states being struck down by the supreme court) I think that the only sensible argument one can have is that more different authorities allows for the ability to escape the idiocies of one for another, and some elements of this are probably somewhat valid, as a home-owners association might be something you'd freely want to be a part of, but a lot of people would not and find it overly intrusive, but... still, if the state of Utah decided to start a literal explicit theocracy, then that likely would just *reduce* the liberty all of us have, which, I really don't think is a good thing.

I can see your point on "against states and free markets", and I've already pointed out the issue with states, but I also do agree with you that free markets without intervention does not magically equal freedom:
1) Distribution of wealth issues are not completely irrelevant to questions of freedom. An indentured servant who cannot pay their way out of debt is just as much a slave as an actual slave. That's an extreme, but more moderate ideas can exist as well.
2) Markets are not free of bargaining issues or information problems, and either of which can cause people to lack a real power to do as desired that they'd have if they could know more about what they were doing, or if things were set up more fairly. I mean, if there is literally only one store in town that only would pick a certain stock, then even if we have the formal liberty that right-libertarians want, we could still be less free than if things were set up in a different way.

And that is without trying to get into issues of pollution and other externalized costs, or with unjust harms and legal issues.

That being said, I still find myself siding as relatively free-market. Here are the reasons:
1) I believe that markets really do tend to advance the interests of everybody in society, at least in the long-run. I think that economist Pete Leeson presents this with some persuasive ability in this writing: http://www.peterleeson.com/Two_Cheers_f ... talism.pdf , even though his ideas do come off strong. Everybody is freer today because of the economic growth that markets have provided, while in the past, there were real issues of slavery. Note: To address concerns about the extreme labor efforts of the industrial revolution, I think that period of time was actually just relatively bad, as one has to note that the reason why workers got such a bad lot and were so expendable was because another worker could always be hired. What this means though, is that there had to be a lot of people in need of work, otherwise finding an employee would have been difficult, and concerns about employees leaving for whatever reason would be a bigger issue. As it stands today, I don't believe that the wage structure of America has really *ever* been much of an issue of regulation, as the biggest regulation impacting the issue of raw wages would be minimum wage, and we have occasionally let that get relatively low, and what happened was that jobs still remained above that amount.
2) I don't trust political policy makers or incentives they have. A lot of policies are made on bad economics and in manners that don't always reflect our best interests. For instance regulatory policy, while often seen as our protection also often becomes the protection of employers from smaller entrants to the market. Small business are always going to be more impacted by regulation, and yet, just like we are less free if there is only that one store in town, I would think we are less free if less businesses are able to afford to enter. Even further though, policy makers often do not make very good decisions not only does the electorate not know the right choice in many cases, but policy makers, sometimes either mistaken or under an influence, do make decisions that make us worse off. For instance, let's just say that a policy maker sets a quota on the French wine we import, well that interferes with my ability to buy French wine, as it will either get expensive or go out of stock, but politicians do take these kinds of actions which I do think impede freedom.(I think international trade issues are not very controversial on this, and politicians LOVE quotas and all these things to mess with trade)
3) I grew up intellectually upon right-libertarian intellectual ideas. I know that may be odd, but I find a number of right-libertarians to be great thinkers. This includes Friedrich Hayek and his work on how society is a result of a process of evolutionary processes, and how markets work through dispersed information being brought together by incentives. This includes David Friedman, son of Milton, and his apparent intellectual honesty. This includes enjoying the ideas of Will Wilkinson, a current member of CATO, who adheres to a more naturalistic philosophy than a lot of people here, and who is still in the category of "right-libertarian" in a lot of uses though and part of that community obviously, but he's been a promoter of the idea of "liberaltarianism", due to a belief that both libertarians and left-wingers care more about freedom than social convention and can learn from each other. This even includes a LOT of George Mason University economists, who seem like intellectuals of a very off-beat and deeply intellectual sort, even including a Tyler Cowen who wrote a book on Autism and was interviewed by Alex Planck. This path dependency does push me down this direction, and does push me to think in this kind of framework, even though in some ways my interests in the matter have waned somewhat.

In any case, I think what is really more important is cutting down the military budget and rampant military action abroad, as well as things like legalizing drugs, and reforming the prison system, than y'know, preventing people down on their luck from getting money.

You seem pretty disturbed to me.

Are you not a baby eater?

Brought to you by the theistic committee with no name.

Power doesn't corrupt, the corrupt seek power.

Power doesn't corrupt, fools corrupt power
I wonder how many variations on this aphorism there are?

YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT I SEE WHEN I CLOSE MY EYES!! !!!q@@$#!@#$@! !@$! !@!@!#$@#$$@#~!~!~~!@#!@$~!@$!@%#!@#$

lolwut

Naked ladies?

ASCII symbols? God?

That's a beautiful poem in your siggy.