February 17 - 1600 - Giordano Bruno is burnt alive by the catholic church. Aquinas : "much more reason is there for heretics, as soon as they are convicted of heresy, to be not only excommunicated but even put to death."
Juan: mmorelli:I say, humans are not dependable enough to handle 'total freedom'. That's why humans need to be governed by...aliens I suppose ?
mmorelli:I say, humans are not dependable enough to handle 'total freedom'.
Exactly, we can't handle freedom but we can be trusted to set up a functioning government to "help us" and then successfully elect the people to run it every few years.
"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows"
Bob Dylan
Rubén:How do you know the amount of research performed by the author? Perhaps he actually reseached through several authoritative sources unknown to us.
Yes quite clearly he's read some amount of nonsense, does the amount really matter?
Rubén:The connections seem logically accurate, if you disagree with the conclusions perhaps you must take a look on the underlying assumptions. Are libertarian assumptions per se correct and assumptions from other ideologies per se incorrect?
Actually the connections aren't logically accurate, in fact there isn't even a great deal of logic in that post, just assertions.
Rubén:Am I supposed to be an anarchist in order to belong to this forum? I have noticed that recently people are respecting and analyzing my views. They can then agree or disagree, it would be rather boring and uneducating if everyone agreed to everything in a 100% groupthink fashion. I would then leave this forum immediately.
No, perhaps it might mean that we could stop refuting statist nonsense and discuss more important things.
GilesStratton: Juan: mmorelli:I say, humans are not dependable enough to handle 'total freedom'. That's why humans need to be governed by...aliens I suppose ? Exactly, we can't handle freedom but we can be trusted to set up a functioning government to "help us" and then successfully elect the people to run it every few years.
And of course this political class in turn can be trusted to not violate anyone's rights (too much), even though they could easily get away with it with total impunity...
Well, maybe not. But hey, anything's preferable to the horror of self-government.
Diminishing Marginal Utility - IT'S THE LAW!
Solomon:And of course this political class in turn can be trusted to not violate anyone's rights (too much), even though they could easily get away with it with total impunity...
I really hope Obama does get elected simply because I rather curious as to what the voters will be saying in 4 ( or 8, god forbid) years time. When the economy is even worse, we're at war with a few more countries and have to pull out of Iraq and when we have even less freedom.
Of course by then this years election will have gone down the collective memoryhole and Obama's calls from "change" will long by forgotten and some new politician (from Asia perhaps?) will be promising change. Or perhaps we'll have simply got to the stage where you get sent the gulags for doubting Komrade Obama.
It amazes me how people seem able to criticise every politician and then the moment one points at perhaps the system that puts them into power is at fault, they're horrified.
MacFall: I don't like to keep referring people to others to explain my positions, but the first few chapters of Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty explain far better than I could why we believe that property rights and non-aggression are objectively right. Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics shows how, in a broader sense, it is possible to come up with a system of objective rights-and-wrongs; a secular morality, so to speak, based in logic and reason.
I don't like to keep referring people to others to explain my positions, but the first few chapters of Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty explain far better than I could why we believe that property rights and non-aggression are objectively right.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe's Argumentation Ethics shows how, in a broader sense, it is possible to come up with a system of objective rights-and-wrongs; a secular morality, so to speak, based in logic and reason.
I managed to read Hoppe's introduction of The Ethics of Liberty. I can see where this reasoning is leading, but I wonder if this logic is really objective why it hasn't become mainstream already.
On another note, I have downloaded about thirty books and find no time to read all of them as I would wish, as replying to these posts also takes a long time and dealing with normal life also takes time... anyway that is a topic for another thread.
Art transcends ideology.
http://mises.org/Community/blogs/ruben
How many people are equipped to understand such knowledge in the first place though? It's simple enough but the state brainwashes them from childhood.
-Jon
To darkness I condemn you...
Juan:Ruben, you seem to think that the government must do some things, say control natural parks. In order for the government to do things you like and you arbitrarily regard as 'important', the government must use violence against people who don't see things the way you and the government do. But according to you there's no right or wrong. So why should your government be obeyed at all ? Certainly not because the government is right, since you've just said that the concept is effectively meaningless.
Juan,
You have not followed the National Parks post lately. In my last post I partially reversed my position and mentioned an example where a private concession of a national park functioned much better than when it was reverted back to the State. Please go back to that post before making uninformed judgments about my views.
I am not saying there is no right and no wrong. I am just saying they are subjective. Mainstream society has functioned with standardized subjective opinions of right and wrong which form the basis of judiciary systems. I recently learned that there are claims by Rothbard of an objective ethics, but I am just beginning to read about it and have no opinion on it yet.
I am not saying anywhere that the concepts of right and wrong and ethics are meaningless. I am not a nihilist.
GilesStratton: Rubén:Am I supposed to be an anarchist in order to belong to this forum? I have noticed that recently people are respecting and analyzing my views. They can then agree or disagree, it would be rather boring and uneducating if everyone agreed to everything in a 100% groupthink fashion. I would then leave this forum immediately. No, perhaps it might mean that we could stop refuting statist nonsense and discuss more important things.
What kind of statist nonsense are you talking about? I have carefully followed your posts and your main interest seems to be refuting anything, be it sense or nonsense, be it from me or from anyone else. Why don't you start contributing some ideas of your own rather than to try unsuccesfully to put people down?
More important things... such as.... keeping on the nonsense of refuting for the sake of refuting?
MacFall:However, because market anarchy is the logical conclusion of Austrian Economics, most of the people on this Austrian Economics forum are market anarchists.
This is objectively false. Economics should be vertfrei. Block always emphasizes an Austrian economist could unlibertarian or even nazi, you don't have to have certain vaues.
scineram: This is objectively false. Economics should be vertfrei. Block always emphasizes an Austrian economist could unlibertarian or even nazi, you don't have to have certain vaues.
Yes, but I didn't say anything about vert of any sort. Austrian Economics shows that the best arrangement of a society (if one desires efficiency and prosperity) is one in which there are no initiations of force or coercion, and that brings us to market anarchy. Since I know of nobody who doesn't want efficiency and prosperity, I think it's safe to say that AE suggests market anarchy.
Or to put it another way, if one desires a peaceful and prosperous society, then one ought to support the removal of the state.
Pro Christo et Libertate integre!
Maxliberty: ....so many libertarians are unwilling to address the issue of disagreement and accept that violence can be a reasonable dispute mechanism.
....so many libertarians are unwilling to address the issue of disagreement and accept that violence can be a reasonable dispute mechanism.
I hope I'm not the only one who disagrees with that!
"As long as there are sovereign nations possessing great power, war is inevitable."
It's wertfrei, not "vertfrei".
Jon Irenicus: It's wertfrei, not "vertfrei". -Jon
Oh dang it... I italicized that to point out the mistake, and made the same mistake in doing so. >.>
Rubén: liberty student: You also had the unfortunate circumstance of having that ghastly MVP tag on you. That's like putting your son in a pink jumpsuit that says "Momma's Boy" on the back and sending him to football practice. Whoever came up with that idea, bad idea. I will forever be thankful to the insightful administrator who had the brilliant idea of putting the MVP tag on me during two weeks. I asked many times what does MVP mean. I am still hoping to have someone tell me what MVP means and why its appearance caused such a hysteria. It seems that nobody has had the courage yet to come up with an answer that only requires listing three words starting with M, V & P. I can only infer that the administrator who decided to put that tag on me read some of my earliest posts and concluded that I had the potential to add great value to this forum and placed that tag to encourage me to keep on writing without being afraid of being different from the mainstream mises.org user. The MVP issue underscored the prejudice and resentment I felt from some members not about me personally, but about an intruder from another country who was perceived to pollute this forum with non libertarian, socialist views. The issue helped people express their judgments about this intruder, sometimes without having taken the effort to get to know him better.
liberty student: You also had the unfortunate circumstance of having that ghastly MVP tag on you. That's like putting your son in a pink jumpsuit that says "Momma's Boy" on the back and sending him to football practice. Whoever came up with that idea, bad idea.
You also had the unfortunate circumstance of having that ghastly MVP tag on you. That's like putting your son in a pink jumpsuit that says "Momma's Boy" on the back and sending him to football practice. Whoever came up with that idea, bad idea.
I will forever be thankful to the insightful administrator who had the brilliant idea of putting the MVP tag on me during two weeks. I asked many times what does MVP mean. I am still hoping to have someone tell me what MVP means and why its appearance caused such a hysteria. It seems that nobody has had the courage yet to come up with an answer that only requires listing three words starting with M, V & P. I can only infer that the administrator who decided to put that tag on me read some of my earliest posts and concluded that I had the potential to add great value to this forum and placed that tag to encourage me to keep on writing without being afraid of being different from the mainstream mises.org user. The MVP issue underscored the prejudice and resentment I felt from some members not about me personally, but about an intruder from another country who was perceived to pollute this forum with non libertarian, socialist views. The issue helped people express their judgments about this intruder, sometimes without having taken the effort to get to know him better.
Sorry for bringing this up again, I am curious on why time goes on and I still get no reply on this.
I can only infer that the administrator who decided to put that tag on me read some of my earliest posts and concluded that I had the potential to add great value to this forum and placed that tag to encourage me to keep on writing without being afraid of being different from the mainstream mises.org user.
Rubén:Sorry for bringing this up again, I am curious on why time goes on and I still get no reply on this.
I disagree with Juan. I don't think it was an accident. Do you know one of the administrators here? IMO, someone thought they were honoring you, and they did you a big disservice by choosing to favour a relative unknown who isn't polished on the topics as an MVP.
But then when the MVP tag came out, I protested it. Absentee administrators suffer from making insensitive decisions. Running a board, or community or business is about knowing the environment and players intimately, not imposing will by brute force or decree.
If you find something evil that wobbles, push it. - Gary North
Rubén: Rubén: liberty student: You also had the unfortunate circumstance of having that ghastly MVP tag on you. That's like putting your son in a pink jumpsuit that says "Momma's Boy" on the back and sending him to football practice. Whoever came up with that idea, bad idea. I will forever be thankful to the insightful administrator who had the brilliant idea of putting the MVP tag on me during two weeks. I asked many times what does MVP mean. I am still hoping to have someone tell me what MVP means and why its appearance caused such a hysteria. It seems that nobody has had the courage yet to come up with an answer that only requires listing three words starting with M, V & P. I can only infer that the administrator who decided to put that tag on me read some of my earliest posts and concluded that I had the potential to add great value to this forum and placed that tag to encourage me to keep on writing without being afraid of being different from the mainstream mises.org user. The MVP issue underscored the prejudice and resentment I felt from some members not about me personally, but about an intruder from another country who was perceived to pollute this forum with non libertarian, socialist views. The issue helped people express their judgments about this intruder, sometimes without having taken the effort to get to know him better. Sorry for bringing this up again, I am curious on why time goes on and I still get no reply on this.
I have no idea who did it. I've been busy finishing my dissertation, so I haven't been following the forums much. I imagine it was added on accident and then removed when the mistake was realized. You might try asking HeroicLife. MVP stands for "Most Valuable Poster." It's something new, the criteria for which haven't been fully worked out yet, but it is my understanding that it is a recognition of building up a good record of valuable, informative, productive posts.
Yours in liberty,Geoffrey Allan Plauché, Ph.D.Adjunct InstructorBuena Vista University
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?"(Who watches the watchmen?)-Juvenal, Satires VI.347
This is just sad...
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