I'm getting real tired with the extreme individualism.

[ICantSpellDawg]

You are a liberal statist. We are born and determine what we do or don't do. A government who gets in the way of our determination is going to meet resistance.

Ciggarettes create chemical dependence, so they have a questionable "individual rights" value, but still. Government that believes that it can tell us what we can and can't do should expect an endless ideological war with it's governed. We live once, and nobody has any idea what for; what gives them the right to tell us anything at all?

If I don't want to do something, I don't care whether a single person, a group of people, or the majority of everyone is telling me that I must. I won't and they have no moral legitimacy in my compulsion. It's my responsibility to find a workable and responsible way of live. I'm not saying that I want to do stupid stuff - hey, I appreciate and seek moral guidance - but I have a right to do stupid things as long as it doesnt endanger others or destroy the rights of others.

[a completely inoffensive name]

You are a liberal statist. We are born and determine what we do or don't do. A government who gets in the way of our determination is going to meet resistance.

Wild assertion appears.

Ciggarettes create chemical dependence, so they have a questionable "individual rights" value, but still. Government that believes that it can tell us what we can and can't do should expect an endless ideological war with it's governed. We live once, and nobody has any idea what for; what gives them the right to tell us anything at all?

You don't understand. Government does not believe it can tell us what we can and can't do, it knows it can because all governments have the power to tax and the ability to tax is the ability to meddle in lives. Do you deny this statement about the power to tax?

If I don't want to do something, I don't care whether a single person, a group of people, or the majority of everyone is telling me that I must. I won't and they have no moral legitimacy in my compulsion. It's my responsibility to find a workable and responsible way of live. I'm not saying that I want to do stupid stuff - hey, I appreciate and seek moral guidance - but I have a right to do stupid things as long as it doesnt endanger others or destroy the rights of others.

You call me a liberal statist, but I really don't think I am.

What I am trying to talk about is that people are eager nowadays to behave as they please, to demand what they want and to refuse any sort of restraint whether it be from the government or society because of weak logic.

What I want is a dialogue that is better than spouting grandiose statements of "my freedoms" when it comes to a disagreement about the roles of government in society. Everyone tries to be a freedom fighter and it is this mentality that creates this situation where if you accept limitations on freedoms (and there is no doubt that all freedoms have their limitations) you must be a statist.

[a completely inoffensive name]

Looking back on what I wrote. I think I initially wanted to talk about much people my age are annoying me which is where the first list there comes from. The way that people my age act generally annoy me and I wanted to talk about it to hash it out and see if I had a legitimate point or if I was annoyed because I am a shy and introverted guy.

Then it kind of conflated with my annoyance at libertarians and republicans who seem to want government to be in a superposition of being influential on people's lives and not influential and I conflated the attitudes and it all kind of became nonsensical at the end.

What I should do is probably write my rants in microsoft word at night then revise in the morning if I want to post. But hey, I still got an approval from Husar, so maybe it wasn't so bad after all.

[Major Robert Dump]

Relax. Go have a smoke.

[ICantSpellDawg]

Government has no moral authority, no matter how much it tries to convey it. It has power authority, the old fashioned kind where we do what it says because it says. In the modern era, where we supposedly create the state, it is becoming increasingly clear that we must limit it to the lowest common denominator need. As those needs change, so should government.

First on the agenda is breaking down the government's arbitrary moral hold on what it has no business being involved in and has no actual moral authority over.
Second on the agenda is determining the core requirements that we as individuals are better served by keeping in the public realm. This should change and we should be cutting the governments role where it is no longer needed or becoming a burden (the postal service, certain drug enforcement, etc)
I want a basic and modular government. Should there be zoning to keep explosions from destroying a town? Should financial services be regulated to avoid massive scale abuses of investors? Should there be laws against killing, stealing finite objects? Yes, Yes, Yes.
Should the government make most drugs illegal, recognize the institution of marriage, outlaw firearms, recognize holidays, give tax breaks for desired behavior, etc? No, No, No.

[Husar]

Holy crap, dawg. I'm touched. I've never seen a post I more thoroughly disagreed with. I can only hope that by the end of this glorious day April 20th I will be able to articulate a response.

And I thought you agree with his post because you thanked him for it.

The problem I see with all the deregulation is that you hand the power to someone else. If the power is not in the hands of the government, then it's in the hands of the wealthy, the landowners or capital owners. Now you could say that the people can retain power by using the markets. Say if a company offers a really bad job for 1$ an hour, noone will take it and as such, all the jobs that are offered are pretty decent at least. On the other hand though, you just removed all kinds of social safety nets and think of people who reject a job as lazy moochers. So even if my example may be extreme, I think you turn people into "slaves" of the companies, with the exception of high achievers perhaps.

Just look at other countries where government control doesn't work properly and people who are indebted have to sell their children to work in factories. Yes, you may want to retain laws against that but you made government so impotent that only lazy moochers will want to become politicians since there is no real incentive to become one. As such you reduce the effectiveness of what little government is left.

As a result the wealthy will pay for their own security, which will control their territory and keep their workers in line because the government does not dare mess with them as noone in the government has the balls or funding to mess with them. You turn your country into a capitalist hellhole where your children work for their slave owners.

[ICantSpellDawg]

And I thought you agree with his post because you thanked him for it.

The problem I see with all the deregulation is that you hand the power to someone else. If the power is not in the hands of the government, then it's in the hands of the wealthy, the landowners or capital owners. Now you could say that the people can retain power by using the markets. Say if a company offers a really bad job for 1$ an hour, noone will take it and as such, all the jobs that are offered are pretty decent at least. On the other hand though, you just removed all kinds of social safety nets and think of people who reject a job as lazy moochers. So even if my example may be extreme, I think you turn people into "slaves" of the companies, with the exception of high achievers perhaps.

Just look at other countries where government control doesn't work properly and people who are indebted have to sell their children to work in factories. Yes, you may want to retain laws against that but you made government so impotent that only lazy moochers will want to become politicians since there is no real incentive to become one. As such you reduce the effectiveness of what little government is left.

As a result the wealthy will pay for their own security, which will control their territory and keep their workers in line because the government does not dare mess with them as noone in the government has the balls or funding to mess with them. You turn your country into a capitalist hellhole where your children work for their slave owners.

I like that you are at least thinking about the reasons for government in the first place. Too many people just seem to take it as a given. Freedom to do whatever you want is a given, to me.. Government authority is only acceptable where it preserves that freedom for everyone. If someone views government as the given and rights as the scraps that can be left to the people with minimal effect, those people are idiots.

[Greyblades]

I fear I am losing my ability to mske an argument. I see so much in ICSD's posts that I just find fundamentally wrong, but when I try to put my thoughts to paper, or indeed even think about putting them to paper, I draw a blank save for "gut feeling". Most frustrating, especially considering the overwhelmingly skillful company.

[Tellos Athenaios]

Government has no moral authority, no matter how much it tries to convey it.

Oh you make this too easy. This has been well and truly studied, basically, settled political science since about "The Social Contract". Government is a bargain between people, a quid pro quo. Moreover it is also a bargain between individuals (you, me) and the rest (the forum). This where government gets its moral authority over you: that is you have to live up to your end of the bargain, and in representing the rest of us government does not have to accept you not meeting your obligations under the deal. Which include that you shall pay whatever taxes the government damn well imposes on you. It's a little more complicated that this, but we're already at a considerably more accurate view of how the world works than whatever is in your post.

So from the fact that you have an obligation towards the rest of us, we as represented by the government have a moral authority to remind you and seek redress if you don't.

It has power authority, the old fashioned kind where we do what it says because it says. In the modern era, where we supposedly create the state, it is becoming increasingly clear that we must limit it to the lowest common denominator need. As those needs change, so should government.

This is quite clearly contrary to pretty much everything ever written about the history of mankind. Next thing you tell me we'll eventually end up being hunter gatherers again.

No: the story of humanity is the story of ever more complex organisation as a function of the scale of populations. Unless you propose we reduce population numbers drastically you will continue to be wrong. You mistake government for laws dictating what you can and cannot do, but government is far more than that. Its main job is actually maintaining low level organisation of its people, enabling them to get together and do useful things, the laws are merely a side effect.

First on the agenda is breaking down the government's arbitrary moral hold on what it has no business being involved in and has no actual moral authority over.
Second on the agenda is determining the core requirements that we as individuals are better served by keeping in the public realm. This should change and we should be cutting the governments role where it is no longer needed or becoming a burden (the postal service, certain drug enforcement, etc)
I want a basic and modular government. Should there be zoning to keep explosions from destroying a town? Should financial services be regulated to avoid massive scale abuses of investors? Should there be laws against killing, stealing finite objects? Yes, Yes, Yes.
Should the government make most drugs illegal, recognize the institution of marriage, outlaw firearms, recognize holidays, give tax breaks for desired behavior, etc? No, No, No.

And this, has nothing to do with the size and complexity of government. At all. It's just a bunch of antiquated rules, they can be enforced, struck or rewritten as society sees fit. Government is about all the basic services which you take for granted so much you hardly notice them. Like traffic lights, for instance.

[HopAlongBunny]

The George Carlin bit I posted might seem flippant but he illustrates the point so nicely.

In the USA (and Canada) people were stripped of their rights and marched off to concentration camps for the crime of being born to people of the wrong race. That is what your rights are worth; they exist at the pleasure of the government.

The latest manifestation might be being labelled as an "Enemy Combatant" or "Terrorist". The government can make any distinction it chooses really; rights are a fiction that exist only so long as it is useful and disappear when they get in the way.

[Husar]

rights are a fiction that exist only so long as it is useful and disappear when they get in the way.

The same is true for the value of money, nation states, love and other things that only exist as long as individuals or a group of individuals want them to exist. If your government can easily take all of them away, it's probably a sign of too much complacency. If the government does not represent the will of the people it's because the people let it. The government only exists as long as the people want it. It has authority because the people accept it. The power of the government and the money of the government are given by the people, so without the people giving it that, the government has no leverage.

[The Lurker Below]

[QUOTE=a completely inoffensive name;2053522748]Looking back on what I wrote. I think I initially wanted to talk about much people my age are annoying me QUOTE]

don't feel bad, people your age annoy me sometimes as well. throw in the people my age and the people my pops age that frequently act like the people your age and that makes a lot of annoying people.

I'm just sorry you hate your freedom loving libertarian friends. Lots of us here seem very quick to protect the unwanted pregnant girls who volunteer to have their bodies brutally intruded yet they also want to deny their smoker friends the right to inhale some gases. :(

[Greyblades]

I'm just sorry you hate your freedom loving libertarian friends. Lots of us here seem very quick to protect the unwanted pregnant girls who volunteer to have their bodies brutally intruded yet they also want to deny their smoker friends the right to inhale some gases. :(

We care not for the smoke they inhale but the huge medical bills they incur for those frequently around them, for us with socialised medicine it is particularly annoying as we have to pay thier own bills on top of it!

[Major Robert Dump]

I believe this nation borrows a billion dollars a day to operate.
Despite that, everyone still wants a piece,
Those who need to make sacrifice need to be someone besides me because (insert reason here)

The OP criticism of the guy is valid because the guy is really bitching for nothing. There is really no point to whine except to whine. Nothing will change,
Yet, the OP should also understand that they guy has every right to be concerned. Because nothing will change.


We are living on credit. There is no way out. Every day we spend loads of money and stupid crap like Cowboy Poetry Museums, Congressional Staff Banquets, etc. The President had a R&B show live from the White House LOL. We run the DOD through contracting methods that reward people to work as slowly and inefficiently as humanly possible. We stack state and federal agencies with dumb laws that take more people to enforce all for the sake of some vague political idea, like a "hate crimes" and and drug laws and farm subsidies and terrorism laws that consider harmless chlorine bombs as WMDs. It just goes on and on and on and on, I won't even get started in the financial sector laws. It's all just so retarded. So much of our economy revolves around accounting tricks and reorganization and financial sector fees. It's comical. We couldnt even do socialized medicine right with a single payer system and instead had to pass a huge amount of costs on to the employers, I mean WTF?

I recall someone on these boards once saying that the actual value of Americans and their assets still exceeds the national debt, which makes us okay. Don't recall who that was, but anymore that sounds like some real Greece-ey rationalization.

I think I said something like "we used to be an nation who could fist fight, and now we just pencil whip" to which ACIN responded that we are always developing new tech that will make us money and make life easier..... the problem with "new tech" is that tech streamlines, it puts people out of jobs, more jobs are always lost from the old tech than jobs gained for new tech, this is the way of evolution. I'm not saying that we should not go down that path, I am simply saying that in conjunction with everything else -- like the fact that we IMPORT everything because we need cheap stuff to support our fat ass way of life, and that a fifth of the nation is employed in the financial sector.

Unless we go to war with China and get reset to zero (which would really, honestly just make Washington do it all over again), or unless we discover the next oil, I simply do not see how we can continue down the same path without people getting screwed really, really, really bad at some point. I'm not being some doomsday guy and saying the nation is going to collapse into a pile of ashes, but at some point things are going to get real bad, real quick, for certain groups of people.

That is my pessimistic post for today. Carry on.

[Greyblades]

So... is there anything that can be realistically done about it?

I'm guessing no, but I'm still asking.

[Husar]

I'm just sorry you hate your freedom loving libertarian friends. Lots of us here seem very quick to protect the unwanted pregnant girls who volunteer to have their bodies brutally intruded yet they also want to deny their smoker friends the right to inhale some gases. :(

They can inhale whatever they want as long as they don't exhale it into my face. So either stop exhaling until the smoke has settled or get filters for your nostrils and we're fine.
Or find another addiction, like alcohol.

Unless we go to war with China and get reset to zero (which would really, honestly just make Washington do it all over again), or unless we discover the next oil, I simply do not see how we can continue down the same path without people getting screwed really, really, really bad at some point. I'm not being some doomsday guy and saying the nation is going to collapse into a pile of ashes, but at some point things are going to get real bad, real quick, for certain groups of people.

I've been saying that for a while. Can we be doomsday buddies?