Since my proposal has nothing to do with voluntary funding of the police, there is no chance that people could try to get by not paying for law enforcement, so you are arguing against a strawman. The police don't do much to protect people's property, that doesn't mean they don't help people (though that is not their primary job). Mostly they are good at dealing with traffic and violent crime after it occurs. No. Libertarianism is about voluntary participation, with or without compensation. It doesn't oppose volunteers. It doesn't oppose for profit enterprises. It seems odd because you are once again arguing against an argument that I didn't make, but rather one you have made up for yourself to argue against. And yet I don't. We also have thousands of examples of services being provided that have not resulted in melee combat in the streets despite being offered by multiple competing outfits. How many street brawls have you seen between Dish Network and DirectTV employees? State Farm and Farmer's insurance salesmen? McDonald's and Burger King workers? They don't happen a lot because airplanes are very expensive and passenger lawsuits for wrongful death are too. A passenger jet costs more than $100,000,000 (for your widebody jets, more like 300M). 300 wrongful death suits are going to be at least another $200,000,000. You think Delta wants to shell out $500,000,000 on a regular basis instead of hiring competent pilots and chipping in for air traffic control? Unsafe air travel is not a sustainable business model. They have enough problems staying afloat without tossing away half a billion dollars willy nilly. The entire NASA planetary science budget is under 3 billion dollars. That includes: So Planetary Defense (which is NASA's anti-meteor program) is one line item in this $2.7B budget. Yeah, they aren't any more concerned about meteors than I am. Why is it rare to crash a car into a house? Because cars are relatively easy to operate and houses don't jump out into the middle of streets. Yes, and? How would that prevent them being used to fund roads? The fact that mail can be moved on commercial arteries doesn't make them post roads. Just like taking a letter with you on a plane doesn't convert it into a mail plane. Post roads are roads built for the purpose of carrying mail. The interstate highway system was not designed or built for that purpose, it was designed and built originally to quickly move troops, and morphed into a largely commercial network. Yes, mandate maintenance. Not do maintenance. Mandating maintenance is regulation. Doing maintenance is not regulation. Calling the game is regulation. Playing the game is not regulation. There are far more homeless people spending far more time homeless now than in the 1920s. I can't find much data on the 1930s, but there was a letter written to FDR from HUD saying that two million people were homeless and migrating west. It isn't clear over what time period they are talking about, so that could be 2 million at once (4 times what we have now), or 2 million over 10 years (less than half what we have now). That is during the greatest economic depression in US history, as opposed to when we have unemployment under 4% now. No, homelessness has not been lessened by modern policies, it has been encouraged. Because it is easier to get 10 business owners to agree on something than 151 million people. Especially when the number of homeless people is greater than the number of business owners. Furthermore, there were laws against vagrancy and they were struck down by the Ninth Circuit, so even when people got together and elected leaders to prioritize getting the homeless away from the businesses, they were not allowed to do so. Yes. I am not advocating getting rid of laws. You haven't seen me say we should have the Purge or legalize rape and murder. Criminal law at the state level is absolutely acceptable under libertarian ideology. The whole basis of the ideology is the non-aggression principle.
One of the bigger joke about "libertarians" is that is that it is generally supported most by folks who always imagine going to essentially endless meetings or civil litigation to decide things. Of course all "court" systems and they will have to be very very numerous would be ad hoc privately agreed to fora. Many of the more extreme libertarians are online a lot so that in. their head ruinations they may not even realize that many folks do not want to always be meeting to decide things constantly that are more efficiently tqken cqre by government and Gasp! omg government regulations. Generally being relatively comfortable and healthy with decent medical insurance it is easy to imagine health problems be solved by 'GO FUND ME's, eating more greens and berries or whatever etc. The biggest joke is that they have bought into a fantasy heavily propagated by a relatively small group of selfish billionaires and their think tanks who have immense wealth that allows them to not have to deal with crime --hire lots of private security, traffic congestion-- use helicopters or have chauffeurs, healthcare-- what is a million or two for an operation, schools --pay for private tutors or very elite small schools etc. Their overwheming goal is to not have the hoards of "poors" and middle class-- including the upper middle class interfere with their wealth by democratic elections. In this they have found commonality with conservqtives who feel threatened by increasing diversity. Although somewhat embarrassing , the atheist, Ayn Rand ,one of their main patron saints,. Ayn Rand summed it up with the title of one of her books. "The Virture of Selfishness". They prefer her fiction books of the Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged which promote her philosophy.
One of the bigger joke about "socialists" is that they have already had their philosophy implemented in multiple countries and 100 million people died. Pol Pot killed over 20% of his countries population in the name of equality. Letting people generally govern themselves and keep their own money, that's the wrong way to go though.
Probably because it's just not realistic in practice as someone or some group will consolidate power. nature abhors a vacuum.
Biden is a moron for allowing the fbi to scavenger through his personal belongings for THIRTEEN HOURS. He's the sitting president of the United States and he's having his home searched for 14 hours. No republican president would EVER allow for that type of garbage and you know it. They went through his personal hand written notes, voicemails, books, every fiber of his house. Ridiculous
And if a business can't afford to pay or chooses not to to try to save money? You were the one who brought up voluntary fire fighters in response to a statement about emergency services. Why did you bring up voluntary fire fighers as legitimate response if that wasn't the argument you were making? Also wouldn't compensated labor not be voluntary but actually paid labor? Yet that did happen. Maybe there aren't situations like that now because we have public polices forces that enforce the laws regardless of businesses ability or willingness to pay. Yet we've seen airlines go bankrupt. We've recently airlines take cost cutting measures that have negatively affected service. We've known there have been crashes due to improper maintanence. You're very trusting in corporations that they won't take risks to save money when we know for a fact that they have. Also a judgement in a lawsuit following a crash doesn't really do much to save the lives of those crashes. The reason why air travel is so heavily regulated that we don't get to that point. So a small government guy doesn't mind spending a $3 billion dollars for something that you don't think is that important. Yet it does happen. Also don't you consider that things like seat belts air bags, traffic controls also play a role in that? SO you are for government run tolls roads then? And moving troops is another Constutionally mandated function of government but to address it directly it is much easier to move an 18 wheeler of mail on a commercial artery. That it can also be used for commerce is a big side benefit. I mean if you want to move a lot of mail building an interstate is very helpful and it can benefit the economy in many other ways. A frequent criticism we hear about government is "unfunded mandates" as part of mandating maintenance government has come to undertand that providing funding also helps. I would like to see your stats for this. There was a major housing crisis in 1920 that was driven by mass eviction of property owners of poorer residents and a housing shortage. Government support of the kind we have then didn't exist then rather than that leading to more low cost housing being built by developers it led to far less. https://www.leshp.org/blog/the-housing-crisis-of-1920/#:~:text=Over 73,000 families were registered,provided by the U.S. Army. According to this site about 581K were homeless in 2022. That is about a quarter of the figure you have for the 1930's. The US population in 1930 was about 123 million. With 2 million homeless that leads to 1.6% of the population homeless. Using the 2022 figure and the current population that is 0.2% of the current population homeless. Those figures show homelessness has been significantly lessened now. And so it's the court's fault? Anyway yes it's easier to get 10 business owners but given that homelessness is a problem that affects much of a community wouldn't more business owners want to get involved? Also to make sure that laws and other standards are enforced evenly wouldn't those business owners look to a wider community response? In other words a government response.
Except in the 19th Century and up until the mid 1930's we didn't have a lot of regulation and we had far less safe food, safe transportation and as the stats that I provided shown actually more homeless. Even when developers built a lot of housing much of it were dangerous tenements. https://www.history.com/topics/immigration/tenements Even today we have many countries that have implement more laissez faire low regulatory environments. The Philippines are a great example and we see how well they do compared to a country like Singapore that has not just very stringent regulations but literally government ownership of many major industries including housing. Yes Communism is a failure in execution. The record for Libertarian small government isn't that great either.
No. I don't think all of Objectivism is wrong though. I do believe that greed and ego are strong motivators for achievement. Where I part with Objectivists is the belief that the individual trumps society and that individual interests will counteract issues of greed and corruption. Individual liberty and aspiration needs to be considered with issues like the Commons, externalities and the rule of law.
Good. I'm glad Biden is fully cooperating with the DOJ instead of opposing them and trying to fight it in court. The DOJ is also doing the right thing and conducting a thorough search.
Yes as we see with the arguments presented in response to my point about air travel safety is that a Libertarian lawyer would be a huge boon for lawyers. If the only thing keeping an airline in check is a lawsuit we've seen airlines risk things and suffer lawsuits regarding things like passenger service. https://www.reuters.com/business/ae...-providing-refunds-after-meltdown-2023-01-03/ Certainly an unscrupulous airline might be willing to risk safety and we've seen that with foreign carriers who run aging aircraft with poor maintenance because there aren't the stringent requirements that are in US air travel. https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2023...any-years-why-is-nepal-prone-to-air-disasters "Most of the aircraft operating in Nepal are not brand new. They cost a lot and flying them may not be viable in an economically backward nation. “We have to opt to buy used aircraft because we cannot maintain the same ticket prices if investment is done in a new aircraft,” Sudarshan Bartaula, spokesman at Yeti Airlines, told Al Jazeera." Given things like bankruptcy rules it certainly seems possible an airline would risk safety and then after an accident go bankrupt before a lawsuit. Our air safety system doesn't work that way. If a plane can't pass federal safety inspections it can't fly. It's not left to the airlines to decide if they can risk it. Even there it's not perfect and there is still need for more regulation than less.
Then either the homeless are going to be in front of that business, or they will benefit as a free rider. Voluntary firefighters actually exist. Libertarianism would not outlaw them. There is no reason they would not continue to exist. Libertarianism doesn't mandate their existence, or depend upon it. No. Voluntary is not the same as volunteer. Voluntary means not compulsory, that you are working the job of your own volition. You think the thing keeping DirectTV and Dish Network workers from fighting in the streets is a police force? Yes, we have seen airlines go bankrupt. Generally that is due to unrealistic pension promises and reductions in profitability. I trust corporations to generally act in their own interests. It isn't in the interest of an airline to crash airplanes. We aren't spending $3 billion dollars on meteor protection. The entire Planetary Science budget is less than that, and planetary defense is one subcomponent of Planetary Science. Ultimately, I would fund NASA entirely through sales of research data. No, I don't think seat belts, air bags, or traffic controls have much to do with whether or not a car crashes into a house. In the incredibly tiny number of instances where it happens (and the subset of that where it is not on purpose), I would guess someone is either speeding and loses control or is drunk/high. I don't care who runs them. You can have the state do it or a non-profit transit trust. The point would be to fund road maintenance through use of the road. And yet, they were not built to move mail, so they are not post roads. That's nice, but there is no constitutional authority for congress to fund port maintenance. Cities and states can, because they have more generalized powers. As I said, it was not clear if it was 2 million over the decade of the 1930s, or 2 million in a year, or 2 million at the same time. We are also at sub-4% unemployment and still have 581K homeless. Unemployment in 1933 spiked to over 25%. Of course there would be a higher homeless rate at 25% unemployment than at 3.6 percent. There were also larger families in the 1930s, so one family being homeless meant more people. No, business owners do not want to subject themselves to the voting power of those who vastly outnumber them and often have interests adverse to their own. On air travel in Nepal. In the last 15 years they have about one crash per year, and the majority (60%) have nothing to do with equipment or maintenance. Nepal is in the Himilayas and it is one of the most dangerous places to fly because of the terrain, thin air, and extreme weather. Nepal actually has an above average EI (effective implementation) score Safety Audit Results: USOAP interactive viewer (icao.int)
Do you honestly think that any republican would've allowed a THIRTEEN HOUR search of their 30 year career WHILE YOURE PRESIDENT?! They went through his entire childhood and adult life. Biden is digging his own hole. His team should've shredded the docs and moved on. He's managing to unite nato in the largest land war since ww2. Ukraine only exists today because of biden declassifying sensitive docs pre invasion.
Would you rather give the poor voting power or let them stir in a pool of hate and resentment untill the poor who outnumber the business owner start displacing property owners through violence? Again, wealthy billionaires who would love your dream libertarian utopia have the basic common sense that you gotta throw some spare change at the poor so they don't violently revolt. Hence the notion that FDR saved capitalism with the New Deal. It made capitalism tolerable to the poor working class. Do you want a Cuban revolution because your policy desires in place will eventually cause that.
I suppose Biden is setting precedent. I would rather have authoritarians be searched by other authoritarians than authorians being protected from other authoritarians.
So basically your solution doesn't really address homelessness or the vagrancy. That ends up being a distinction without difference. At that point other than being drafted every job is voluntary. Again you were the one who brought up volunteer fire departments as a response to government funded fire departments. If you don't thin that is straw man why did you bring it up? Yes. After having more than a hundred years of law enforcement that has acted against street brawling there is a culture of law abiding. Do you think without a police force people will behave more moral? When the MPD said they were under siege and couldn't respond I didn't see that. I suppose that's why Southwest did so great last month. This really gets though to why Libertarian is utopian. The trust in corporations to act in their own interests and those interests to coincide with the interests of wider society is as blind as Socialist belief in the state. Yet it is still government funded spenidng. Again the stats don't support you view. https://injuryfacts.nsc.org/motor-vehicle/historical-fatality-trends/deaths-and-rates/ " By all measures, motor-vehicle safety has vastly improved since the early 1900s. Driver attitudes and behaviors have changed substantially, as has vehicle safety technology, which makes car travel safer. The population motor-vehicle death rate reached its peak in 1937 with 30.8 deaths per 100,000 population. The current rate is 12.9 per 100,000, representing a 58% improvement." You've already acknowledged the also perform another Constitutional function. So they both meet the Constitutional function of troop movement and moving mail. So would you then support unfunded mandates or would you just expect the constituational power to regulate be made without providing means to address those. So you're just making a speculation about the stats you provided. Based on your speculation the nubmer of homeless could be much higher than what you're providing. Further while yes unemployment is low that said the population now is 200 million more than what it was in 1930 and the percentage of homeless is 8 times less than what it was. The stats don't support that homeless is much worse even with better employment numbers when you consider the vast difference in overall population then and that the total number of homeless now is still only around a quarter of a figure you provided. So why do businesses lobby so much for changing laws and government action on things like homelessness. Why don't alll of them just hire more private security?
Probably not but this isn't a matter of partisanship but a matter of principle. If you believe that elected leaders should be held accountable then you should support measures to enforce accountability regardless of what one or the other party does. He might've gotten away with it but I would say shredding classified documents that rightfully belong to the government would be unethical. I don't see what that has to do with the documents found in stored improperly at his house and center. Are those docments having to do with the Ukraine invasion? if they were from his career as a senator probably not.
