managalar

99 said �This is a problem of identifying intentionality of crime.�

Harm is caused, even if the person is ignorant of the consequences of their harmful actions.

99 said �Those who simply like to be cruel, would be quickly stamped out by those who like to make a decent profit, even if marginal.�

I think evidence exists to the contrary. Besides, it�s a lot easier for the person who is being cruel to ignore the suffering they are causing. Would you dismiss their actions as �reasonable� because they didn�t intentionally cause shortages by hording because they didn�t realize how much other people needed what they had?

99 said �Who the heck is to establish what is "cruel" in societal relationships?�

I will. So will others. We know we will not stop cruelty, but we can provide recourse for weak individuals (all individuals are weak) who feel victimized by someone who thinks it�s their prerogative to coerce them. We are not yet saying someone doesn�t inherently have the right to raise their kids how they want, but we have agreed on limits. Such limits DO include psychological abuse as shown by evidence as having lasting unhealthy consequences for the victim, thus we have established something as �cruel�.

99 said �The escape clause is that irrationality by its nature cannot survive. It self destructs, like trying to find the square root of a negative number.�

This statement makes little sense. One can have irrational concepts, and survive. The loony farmer who thinks his crops grow because he prays to the rain gods at least once a year will be as likely to survive as the farmer who says they don�t know how their crops grow. I would tend towards saying that irrationality inhibits progress towards advancement and more accurate descriptions of the world (science), but doesn�t necessarily prevent survival. That�s a pretty tall order to say irrationality cannot survive, and I�d have to see some pretty solid evidence that irrationality does not currently exist. I can find many examples of ideas I consider irrational (which lead to irrational actions), which have survived.

99 said �Society does not and cannot determine what is good or what is "need". Only the individual can. Its an important thing to understand.�

Nonsense. Important why? So we can understand nonsense like this statement? I�d say most people are not even qualified to know how much to eat: many people starve themselves intentionally, many others are fat (not genetically, but from excess), and many fail to take medicines to preserve their own life because they didn�t realize on their own they needed the medicine. To understand what, �need� is the person would have to know how their body works inside out. This is NOT subjective. Combined human medical efforts work hard to discover what �proper� nutrition is required for life, what medicines are required to fix aliments, and what immunizations I need�.The implication that your making about society, that any individual is more qualified to say what he �needs�, rather than combined human efforts (society), is complete nonsense. How can you imply you�re more qualified, than say a doctor, to say what you need to live? If you admit that you cannot, without degrading the importance of living (ex. If you say, my freedom is the bigger need and more important than my health), then why can�t humans as a group agree to at least sustain the lives of the people?

99percent, I�ve made efforts to try and understand what your talking about when you call subjective things, �objective.� When you say objective, do you mean something more like, goal oriented? The goal could be something objective like, human life is sustained, so, if people are on Earth (an objective characteristic) the moral system has an objective to reach towards.

99percent, you talk about how you could explain everything, but it would just take you days, but most of us haven�t asked you to explain everything. We have reflected upon what you have written, and said, �what would happen to this?� And your most common response is, (paraphrased) well, that can�t happen, or if you agree that it would happen, you have said, we are just not advanced enough for it. No matter how much you repackage the opinion that is based on assertions like irrationality isn�t able to survive, that free markets would �stamp out� greed and cruelty, and that everyone knows what �reasonable� is and further is compelled to act reasonably�no amount of further explanation, even days worth, will even take it out of the realm of opinion, let alone substantiate the validity of the theory. I don�t mean to Libertarian �bash�, or anything personal, but I disagree thoroughly, and will continue to disagree until I see evidence to substantiate the assertions, many of which lack self-consistency, and are illogical (like equating the irrationality of human thought and action with irrational mathematics, and concluding that irrationality cant survive in humans because it cant survive in math =>false analogy)

99Percent

Yes, it would have worked in any society in any period of history.

Libertarianism is a political system, and like all political systems its a way for humans to live with each other.

Its like asking if mathematics would not have "worked" in tribal societies.

John Hancock

99%

Word the fuck up, (case sensitive) as govermental form libertarinism is what? I mean in your own words, no damn url or quote Charlie Who's bit? Right now I'm like with Hubbel "It's both ice cream topping and floor wax".

The Hell with Disney, Gilbert Shelton forever.

Martin Buber

August Spies

99percent:

thanks for answering. Im glad you are conistant.

Libertarianism is a political system, and like all political systems its a way for humans to live with each other.
Its like asking if mathematics would not have "worked" in tribal societies.

no, it is not. There are many people (such as hegel and marx) who have a progressive view of history. This is to say mankind moves foward and getrs better BUT previous steps were necessary for us to move foward.

Marx bases his theory on the avialble rescources and technology of a society. Technology changes, the system changes. You can of course disagree with this theory but it is certainly not a given.

personally I think it is silly to believe capitalism could have worked in previous periods of history. but thats me.

Gurdur

You mean it's a transporting thought to subjectivists ?

John Hancock

Gurdur

Even by my standards that is a low blow.:notworthy

Martin Buber

Gurdur

Wrong

Objectivism functions as an ideological legitimatization for much Libertarianism; you've seen yourself the quotes here on this thread and on the other related thread about Objectivists putting their ideology above science, philosophy, and wjhatever anyone else might think, and generally pronouncing they have the Only Truth.
It's a pseudo-philosophy with far-ranging political effects ----

or at least if their wishes came true, , it would have far-ranging political effects .

________________

But if it's a transporting thought, wouldn't the blow be high ?

John Hancock

Gurdur:

But if it's a transporting thought, wouldn't the blow be high ?

Depends on weather you use an explosive or baseball bat.

I think I understand now libertarianism is the sweetness of rationalization. I'm correct now? I could never be right.

Martin Buber

Gurdur

Or vice-versa. Heh. You're right.

99Percent

managalar:

The person hoarding food for the sole purpose of being cruel is also harming himself, because hoarding costs money and time and effort, of which he will not recup investment. Besides its a risk he is taking too, because suppose an alternate source of food is found - he is royally screwed. Lets suppose I would like to be "cruel" to the football fans and decide to "hoard" all the tickets for the superbowl and buy the broadcasting rights. Its going to cost me one heck of a lot money to be able to achieve such a goal just for the sake of being "cruel". Likewise hoarding valuable food is going to cost me a lot to be able to achieve my goal of being cruel. Its simply a stupid idea. This is what I mean by irrationality being self destructive.So you feel you can be dictator? You can dictate when someone is acting "cruelly", what people need or not need? Or maybe a group of people can do so?Who the heck is "we" here? Your are talking pure subjectiviness here. "Cruel" is subjective if no violence or threat of violence is observable. I feel the cruelty of my neighbors because they won't let me swim in their wonderful pool, besides I really need to take a dip and wash myself and stress out. I feel the cruelty of my brother because he won't lend me his car so I can take it to the beach which I really need to do since its been ages since I have seen the sea.
Irrationality can survive yes, but it doesn't survive as long as rationality. The farmer who tries to figure out how to grow better will be more succesful than the farmer who sits down to pray all day. I think its pretty common sense.
Yes but the individual has to make the final choice. If a group of people don't want to eat the food you consider to be healthy or correct you cannot force people to have your diet. Individual bodies vary greatly and require different kinds of foods. For example some people genetically cannot tolerate milk or even meat. Are you going to say that they actually need to eat milk or food? Its up to the individual to find for himself what is good food for him. He will probably need a doctor sometimes or maybe through trial and error to discover the correct diet for himself but thats up to him to decide and choose the course of action.

What I call objective is that which everyone can determine to be true by following common sense and reason. That some people refuse or cannot identify objective truth is another matter entirely.

Well I explain and explain and I have yet to convince a single person here in the forum that Libertarianism is correct political system. I have seen others support me and maybe some of the lurkers are discovering through their own the validity of its idea. Like I said, its a matter of understanding human nature, how goods and services are produced and consumed, how people can advance economically and why they actually strive to do so. Its a matter of using common sense and seeing how mankind has made ideological mistakes in the past and how we could avoid them.