“The only ‘fair’ is laissez-faire, always and forever.” ― Dmitri Brooksfield
The idea of a “social contract” is flawed in the sense that it is not a contract at all, as it is unilateral in nature.
Voting and taxation do not necessarily imply explicit consent with how government (the monopoly on violence) works.
The dilemma is how you define harming others and what implies being intolerant to an idea rather than a person holding that idea.
The politically correct bien-pensants always fail to recognize that stereotyping is a form of inductive reasoning. If you see something repeatedly, but not necessarily without fail, you form an opinion, which is layered with a degree of truth. A subset of the human race, based on ethnicity, inclination, or geography, will spring to mind after reading each of the following words: financier, migrant worker, male flight attendant, NASCAR driver, sprinter.
I’m sure most of us immediately conjured similar images. Yes, it is unfair to impose a group characteristic onto an individual, but we did so nonetheless. To belabor the obvious, each of us is an individual, not a group. When the stereotype is proven fallacious for an individual, move on.
Some people care about the latest thing, regardless if it directly affects them or not.
Okay, so you admit you have no idea how economics work.
You’re not even trying to counter-argue my argument.
Conscription is slavery.
It doesn’t matter if everybody is drafted, it won’t change that fact. I think the problem is the existence of the so-called war, that is, mass murder. Who are the ones behind of all that coercion? The state.
Conscription should be abolished.
You dont understand economics at all if you dont understand how all free markets naturally devolve into monopolies.
I’m a “follower” of the Austrian School of Economics, although the idea that monopolies are government-grant privileges was first originated by the economists of the classical school (and they were right).
Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even this should be regretted since it benefits the consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function.
The definition of a monopoly by the idea of “monopoly price” has no effective meaning in free-market setting, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change.
demand is manufactured by misleading and manipulative advertising and marketing.
It’s driven by planned obselesence.
Consumer products develop through experimentation. Consumer preferences also change and develop gradually through time. To meet them requires entrepreneurial judgment.
Nor is buying essential items like food and utilities voluntary.
Aside from a few innate demands concerning hunger and temperature, consumer preferences emerge as a result of interaction between many individuals.
Each consumer regulates the consumer products he consumes by spending money. There is no good substitute for the market process concerning the development and dissemination of consumer goods.
You cant have a free market without a government enforcing anti monopoly laws.
A free market is not free at all if the government is stepping in any voluntary exchange.
The existence of “anti-monopoly” laws has caused more harm than good by protecting particular competitors, not competition. In fact, monopolies can only survive through government-grant privileges, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a free-market setting.
“A market society needs no antitrust policy at all; indeed, the state is the very source of the remaining monopolies we see in education, law, courts, and other areas.”
I’m really meant it. Saying an argumentum ad hominem is pretty childish for my taste.
Touch some grass, please.
Under TRUE capitalism the market is free but regulated as needed.
The market can’t be free if it’s regulated. Any intromission of the State in any voluntary exchange is stepping in the natural rights of its citizens.
We don’t live in real capitalism, there is no regulation, the oligarchy has captured the agencies that were supposed to regulate the market.
The agencies are the oligarchy. The politicians and lobbyists benefit each other by the existence of regulations, taxation, subsidies, FIAT money, intellectual property, public licenses, monopolical privileges, etc.
Yes, we don’t live in “real capitalism” (that is, in a free-market setting), we live in a corporatocracy.
Part of a larger quote, but I agree with it.
I don’t like representative democracy.
It would appear that democracy benefits the rulers, as democracy alone has provided the most consistent means for those formerly in power to sleep and die in peace. And the same holds for the courtiers, nomenklatura, and apparatchiks. These sycophants need no longer dread midnight’s knife and muffled cries, and the subsequent crowning of a new king. The elite and bureaucracy can retire to their farms and while away their passing years without fear — their riches and posterity intact. As I see it now, democracy is not to the advantage of the demos, it is to the advantage of the power elite. Something to think about.
I can vote the State, I can’t vote the CEO.
You vote for certain politicians, other people vote for other politicians, and whoever wins, the tyranny of majority will emerge. The success of the CEO is dependent of supply and demand, if there are no monopolical privileges. (I discussed this in another reply).
That’s the citizens job, not his.
Following your logic, the citizens voting him is a perfect clue of this, am I right? Otherwise, I agree with you about what Milei will do with his powers. I don’t trust 100% any politician, even him, but he’s the only one who explicitly showed that, like donating each month his salary (funded by taxes) and not funding certain political campaigns.
Again it’s the citizens that dictate that. I can vote for people wanting to build something in the State, not a CEO that wants to build a highway for the goodwill of mankind.
Citizens has no direct influence in the process of decision politicians make. The CEO (at exception of lobbyists) wanting to build a highway is: using his own factors of production achieved by social-cooperation (capital, land, technology and workers) and his desire of providing it emerges by supply and demand, by competence in a free-market setting and the economic calculation of consumers in a system of prices.
Nobody wants to be the “bad guy”
Sorry, but I don’t get what you’re trying to tell me here. Read about the Austrian Business Cycle Theory.
Every “work flexibility” I’ve ever seen pitched is just code for turning people into wage slaves.
Leaving aside the exact policies of Milei about this (as I’d prefer no policy at all), any governmental intervention in labor markets will cause unemployment among less productive workers. The term “slave” is not valid because those workers voluntary agreed, in a contract, the amount of money they’d get to do certain job.
“Wages represent the discounted productivity of labor in satisfying consumer demand. Demand for consumer goods translates into demand for workers.”
It’s just that every time I’ve seen someone purpose breaking the system to make it better, they just want to break the system so that they can profit.
Fair enough. Distrust in politicians is perfectly logic and ethical, but accusing him of fascist? It does not make any sense.
Because we voted for them.
The fraud of representative democracy. What about those who didn’t vote them (the tyranny of the majority)? We, the common citizens, have really any power if our vote is secret?
The rights and obligations of a contractual act are generated by explicit consent of both members. This does not happen when we our vote is completely secret, without our names and surnames. Politicians are free to impose their monopolical powers, even if we don’t choose them.
“Representative democracy is the illusion of universal participation in the use of institutional coercion."
We didn’t vote for the board of directors of private companies.
Because we shouldn’t. Except for the lobbyists, they are using their private property and their factors of production achieved by social-cooperation.
There’s plenty of waste and corruption in private enterprise. It’s not voluntary if they lie cheat and steal just like bad politicians.
The only difference is that, in a free-market setting, they wouldn’t have any monopolical privileges to mantain their economical power and reputation in the market, as their permanence is dependent of supply and demand.
Taxes exist because public goods are actually good, and benefit everyone.
Taxes raise money for transfers to special interests and public employees. Why would you trust an oligarchy of politicians (the State) to decide which goods are useful “for a community” and which don’t?
In contrast to private businesses that supply the goods that consumers voluntarily want to buy, public officials lack of the capacity to pick data as to what people truly demand, much less how to go about meeting those demands economically. They don’t have direct feedback of what every individual in the community want; they don’t pass the test of economic rationality.
If the Monopoly of Violence can’t act economically, they have no other choice but respond to interest groups, so tax money will necessarily end up with narrow interest groups rather than the provision of “public goods”
The sum of the parts is greater than the individual parts.
The end does not justify the means. The mere existence of taxation is detrimental (and antithetical) to the very source of economic growth, that is, voluntary exchange.
Goods like education and roads, for example, are goods like any other: they can be supplied by markets and markets alone.
The only privilege we need is a better community.
A better community will be formed if it’s achieved by voluntary means. Moral obligation is not the same as legal obligation. How can individuals be virtuous? By letting them act freely.
Economic inequality being one of the biggest drivers of democratic back sliding.
Shitty part is that authoritarian doesn’t really offer anything better.
Hey! Let’s solve “economic inequality” with more statism! That’s not authoritarian at all!
Obviously, wanting to reduce the monopolical privileges of politicians, public spending and taxes (robbery), erradicating the central bank, increasing work flexibility and advocating for individual rights and liberty is fascist af. Believe me, guys!
It depends on why and how you use stereotypes.
Prejudice only properly refers to judgments formed without consideration of the available information.
Prejudging is legitimate when we do not have all the relevant facts of an object or subject, having to resort to inductive reasoning in order to try to induce and predict its individual characteristics.
It’s all about trying to make new information about someone or something, so we can economize information.