MenKlash

The dilemma is how you define harming others and what implies being intolerant to an idea rather than a person holding that idea.

The temptation and crucial flaw of a totalitarian mind are that everyone must play a part in a superstructural battle between good and evil. Standing on the sidelines or taking a neutral position on present topics is not allowed; one may not merely observe or ignore the madness played out among the power hungry.

Everyone needs a take; everyone needs to “be informed” on the grand, irrelevant events of our broken times. Everyone needs a flag in their profile picture—a not-so-grand gesture indicating that they support the “latest thing.”

The problem is that they fall in a false dilemma.

Evaluating the world and the people around you with labels so generic as "left wing" or "right wing" is not useful at all. Another problem is being too politicized, as I think it can damage your relationships with others.

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.

Economists of the classical school were right to define a monopoly as a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting. Predatory pricing cannot be sustained over the long haul, and not even the attempt should be regretted since it is a great benefit to consumers. Attempted cartel-type behavior typically collapses, and where it does not, it serves a market function. The term "monopoly price" has no effective meaning in real market settings, which are not snapshots in time but processes of change. 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.

Amazon is just another big company that benefits from corporatocracy.

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.

The free market is not, as the social Darwinists imagine, a struggle between rich and poor, strong and weak. It is the principal means by which human beings cooperate in order to live. If each of us had to produce all his food and shelter by himself, almost no one could survive. The existence of large-scale society depends absolutely on social cooperation through the division of labor.

Democracies get sick and then die from within.

Representative democracy has allowed for peaceful transitions from one ruling elite to another, but the use of institutional coercion is still there. The government is not the problem, it is the mere existance of the Monopoly of Violence, that is, the State.

"Probably no other belief is now so much a threat to liberty in the United States and in much of the rest of the world as the one that democracy, by itself alone, guarantees liberty."

Obviously, this mechanism of peaceful change is an important distinction, but does not absolve democracy of its shortfalls.

Instead of focusing in on how the various Republican candidates for speaker, both individually and collectively, embody how today’s Republican Party is an existential threat to the country’s multiracial pluralistic democracy

As mentioned before, the State itself is a threat. The model of the parliamentary dictatorship, that is, an oligarchy of politicians and public employees, does not serve our interests: it serves elites and violates rights to self-ownership, and efforts to limit governmental powers tend to fail.

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.

Part of a larger quote, but I agree with it.

I don't like representative democracy.

Consequently, the greater the sphere of public as opposed to private education, the greater the scope and intensity of conflict in social life. For if one agency is going to make the decision: sex education or no, traditional or progressive, integrated or segregated, etc., then it becomes particularly important to gain control of the government and to prevent one’s adversaries from taking power themselves. Hence, in education as well as in all other activities, the more that government decisions replace private decision-making, the more various groups will be at each others’ throats in a desperate race to see to it that the one and only decision in each vital area goes its own way.

If the person renting a home stops paying, the landlord will use force to evict the person.

In this case, the force applied by the landlord is legimitate because the tenant is not performing their contractual obligations over the property of the landlord.

You didn’t pay taxes? Here, lemme force you to stay in prison for a while, also here’s a fine on top of that.

There is no contract between the government and citizen that legitimize the violence of the state. Any theory of a "social contract" will be unilateral by nature. Actually, the state itself is a threat to the Non-Agression Principle.

Not all contracts are voluntary and, more importantly, the workers are almost always the weaker party when it comes to negotiation.

The asymmetries of power between both parties does not mean the contract is not voluntary. In fact, any government intervention in the labor market will make this situation worse, as these encourage poverty and harm those workers who are the less productive in the market.

If you leave it to the market to “self-regulate”, you’ll just get feudalism 2.0, where companies become the new noble houses

As long as private property is not violated by institutional coercion; as long as the system of prices is not manipulated by any government policy; as long as human action and his natural rights are respected: social cooperation through the division of labor will flourish, as voluntary exchange is the source of economic progress.

Indeed, civilization itself is inconceivable in the absence of private property. Any encroachment on property results in loss of freedom and prosperity, as property is the only way to resolve conflicts by the existence of scarce resources.

The market is a process, not an "equilibrium model". It is not designed, but emerged from human action.

Really, any sufficiently big company will act just like a govt, full of unnecessary bureaucracy

The difference is that having market concentration does not mean being a monopoly. In fact, a monopoly is a government-grant privilege, for gaining legal rights to be a preferred producer is the only way to maintain a monopoly in a market setting.

The state can not have direct consumer feedback; it can not act economically. Instead, it collects taxes and spends them arbitrarily following interest groups.

"In a market economy, the range of quality, quantity, and type of goods and services correspond to social needs. These goods are services that are valued by consumers, and hence, they will be provided if it is economically feasible to do so relative to other social priorities."

No amount of prolix explanation excuses even the act of stereotyping.

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.

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 kind of force people to enter into rent because they can’t afford houses and you control the rent however you want.

The landlords are providing a service to those who can't afford houses, and the tenants, through economic calculation, determine that it's better to pay for a department rather that saving for a house.

In fact, deficit spending, printing fiat money and manipulating interest rates harm savings and relative prices.

"If there seems to be a shortage of supply to meet an evident demand, then look to government as the cause of the problem."

Okay, so you admit you have no idea how economics work.

You're not even trying to counter-argue my argument.

Touch some grass, please.

I'm really meant it. Saying an argumentum ad hominem is pretty childish for my taste.

I don't know too much about the MAGA movement, as I'm not american, but thanks for sharing your views.

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."

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.

Mileiístas (in spanish).

Yes, I voted him, but to defend myself from the state. I don't think that, in the long-term, he's going to save our current crisis. In fact, I advocate for the complete abolishment of the state through agorism.

I mean if you’re gonna criticize the whole capitalist system sure.

1. The Federal Reserve purchases assets and thereby increasing bank reserves.
2. The banks expand credit and consequently the money supply.
3. All prices are raised, and the rate of interest is artificially lowered.
4. Misleading signals to businessmen starts to emerge, causing them to make malinvestments.
5. Businesses overinvest in capital goods and underinvest in consumer goods.
6. As the "time preference" of the public have not really got lower, consuming is preferred over saving.
7. There is a lack of enough saving-and-investment to buy all the new capital goods.
8. Then, "depression" originates in order to reestablish the consumer's old time-preference proportions.
9. The banks return to their natural and desired course of credit expansion...

FIAT money is independent of capitalism. Its coercive existence leads to distortions of relative prices and the production system, as government and its central bank will always tend to be inflationary.

The taxpayers and the taxmen.

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 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.

Do you believe no one can live outside the authority of the government?
Do you believe in theft and redistribution of wealth to fund their programs?
Do you believe a small oligarchy of politicians can best regulate the economy?
Do you believe a monopoly of fiat currency must be maintained?
Do you believe in using violence and force against those who disagree with you?

If yes, I think you should reconsider your position about who "deserve oxygen" and who does not.

I'd prefer the term statism, but I agree with you.

Eat the Fed!

lunatics that cry at taxation but orgasm at rent and profiting off others’ work.

The former is only possible through institutional compulsion and coercion. The latter is through a voluntary contract that expresses the cooperation of both parties to work for each other, as they have a property interest in specific performance of the other.

Denying this process of voluntary exchange is, implicitly, denying the free will of the tenant and worker.

Some people care about the latest thing, regardless if it directly affects them or not.

Taxation is robbery. I live in Argentina (+100% in taxes) and I have this problem too.

But not about the humanity, dignity, and freedom of people.

Are you referring to the recognition of the problems involving those concepts or the solutions proposed to fix them?

We can have different approaches and views about a variety of problems, but the concepts would be the same.

It doesn't mean we should always make an agreement about how to solve them, but the idea of treating others who don't think like me as "monsters" just because they are different is populist and dishonest.

Hating ideas is not the same as hating people.

Yes, because america falling into fascism

I'd like to know what is your definition of fascism.

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.

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.

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!