John Stossel: "I Was Brainwashed"

michaelsuede said:
No they are not.

Judges routinely violate the Constitution on an almost daily basis. The courts have the authority to dictate what the Constitution means, therefore they are not beholden to any law. They can interpret it as they deem fit, and there is nothing to stop them from doing so short of an insurrection.



Our current system encourages open revolt far more than anarcho-capitalism.
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I don't think I can stand against a delusion this gigantic.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
The problem is, the moral ones could be isolated, and packs of immoral ones could prey on them.


What if the moral people could organize themselves, set down basic rules of human behaviour, and make a system to maintain civility, and govern things... Hmmm...
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I'm strongly in favor of this, as long as the moral people don't use their organization to start behaving immorally.
The concept of a voluntary, collective government is sound. The problem is that the government does not have more moral force than the people who make it up.
Calling it "the Government" doesn't suddenly make it immune to the rules that any other organization of people need to follow.
 
oh and at one time you had to PAY the local fire department to come save your house. If you had not paid a "policy" your home was allowed to burn. This happened in LONDON where the fire department would wait until the fire jumped to a home that was insured before getting to work. Seems nutty, but this was a well accepted policy. Some homeowners hedged their bets by waiting to see if their homes did catch on fire, and at that point meeting the fire brigade with payment for a policy.

It was accepted behavior in what was felt to be the most "civilized" nation on Earth at that time. People died as a result of this civilized behavior. Mind you, most Libertarians I know are really nice people with a far more balanced view of what they wish a LIbertarian society to be like, including fair treatment of people that are disabled and caring for our elderly. And a paid police and fire department. So, many Libertarians should not be painted with the... "I'm happy with stepping over dead bodies of the elderly that have starved in the streets..." brush.
 
This video is cult-like.

Stossel: You're a what?
Hot Young Female #1: A libertarian.
transition effect
Hot Young Female #2: I'm a libertarian.
Stossel: What's that?
Hot Young Female #2: It's someone that...

And you have the nerve to come in here and use this guy as evidence of Marxist brainwashing! Hilarious! Well, I thought the new South Park episode tonight was going to be the funniest thing I've seen all day but it will have to be a damn fine episode.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I'm strongly in favor of this, as long as the moral people don't use their organization to start behaving immorally.
The concept of a voluntary, collective government is sound. The problem is that the government does not have more moral force than the people who make it up.
Calling it "the Government" doesn't suddenly make it immune to the rules that any other organization of people need to follow.
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It would be nice if that could work, a voluntary government. Most people don't think it would, for a variety of reasons. So we're stuck with a "participate or get out" government, which, in effect, isn't all that different from a voluntary collective government.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Okay, last time I checked, SCOTUS and only SCOTUS has the right to interpret the meaning of the constitution with regard to established laws.
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I disagree. Each court has the responsibility of interpreting the meaning of each statute, as well as its interaction with the constitution. Those decisions are answerable to SCOTUS, but it's pretty much never SCOTUS who takes the first bite at the apple, and most decisions never make it to SCOTUS.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Okay, last time I checked, SCOTUS and only SCOTUS has the right to interpret the meaning of the constitution with regard to established laws. What prevents any Justice from going haywire in SCOTUS is, presumably, the other judges.
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Doesn't matter if the supreme court is the final arbitrator or not, the supreme court routinely violates the US Constitution and even reverses its own opinions from time to time.

Obviously if the court reverses a prior opinion, then its previous ruling must have allowed what it considered to be an unconstitutional law stand up until it was reversed.

Hence, they can interpret the Constitution in any manner they deem fit. The only thing that keeps the supreme court in check is the threat of an insurrection that might result from a grossly unconstitutional ruling.

Literally, that is the only thing.

The courts are a tyranny unto themselves and have the ability to create law as a dictator would.

The supreme court upheld slavery - let us not forget this.
 
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AvalonXQ said:
The difference is that, today, these crooked cops and judges act under color of law. In an an-cap system, their behavior would fall under the same scrutiny as anyone else's. It's possible this would "institutionalize" dishonesty, if the culture ends up lending these folks the same legitimacy of an "institution" that they enjoy today. But, again, if people generally understand that no one is immune from scrutiny or the basic principles of morality, it seems far more likely that these crooked people will be seen and overcome.
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What scrutiny? The press? Their only in it for the money so the wealthiest would simply buy the papers too. In fact they'd probably buy them and just put them out of business. If they don't want to spend the money they can just send their private security force to have a little chat with them.

Who cares if the public thinks it's not a legitmate institution? What does your opinion matter when the richest guy in town outright owns the cops? The basic principles of morality are not going to save you when the local dictator has a well paid staff of jack-booted thugs at his disposal.

These sorts of things don't happen in society today because we have rule of law and a state to enforce it. Remove those things and human greed is the only operating factor.
 
AvalonXQ said:
I disagree. Each court has the responsibility of interpreting the meaning of each statute, as well as its interaction with the constitution. Those decisions are answerable to SCOTUS, but it's pretty much never SCOTUS who takes the first bite at the apple, and most decisions never make it to SCOTUS.
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Well, if that is a fact, you don't disagree, I was wrong.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Well, if that is a fact, you don't disagree, I was wrong.
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He is right. SCOTUS has the option of having the final say, but they never have the first say. In any common law system it is up to the courts to interpret what any given law means in practice.
 
TubbaBlubba said:
Well, if that is a fact, you don't disagree, I was wrong.
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Ah. Well, to elaborate just a little -- common law courts like in the US operate under an elaborate system of precedent, where a court is generally bound by the previous decisions of the same court and any court "under" it in the hierarchy. In U.S. Federal law, this is most apparent at the Circuit level, where different Circuits (all of the federal courts in a certain cluster of states) may follow different interpretations and therefore be under different laws unless or until SCOTUS addresses the issue. This is called a "Circuit split". Most areas of law have many of these at any given time.
Since state law is unique to each state and each state has its own constitution and laws, state district courts, appeals courts, and high courts have similar levels of precedent and sometimes similar "splits".
The above is of course a simplification and doesn't apply universally.
 
brodski said:
He is right. SCOTUS has the option of having the final say, but they never have the first say. In any common law system it is up to the courts to interpret what any given law means in practice.
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Never is too strong a term. IIRC, SCOTUS does have original jurisdiction in certain unusual situations.
 
michaelsuede said:
Sellers can give better service to certain buyers if they chose, but that's not going to stop market forces from providing coverage to everyone.

An insurance company that has 10,000 subscribers and a police force of 100 men is just as potent as a billionaire who hires 100 men to be his personal police force.

Thus, if the billionaire somehow manages to pay his men enough money to launch an attack against one of those 10,000 subscribers, they will be facing off against a police force of equal power.

Of course, I highly doubt such a scenario would ever happen.
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And when that billionaire decides to hire 101 men for his personal police force? Or 1,000?

Did you think this through at all?
 
The world is not divisible into fully compartmentalizable resources.

There is in the liberatarian framework no effective solution to particulate pollution, AGW, SOx, NOx, mercury pollution, overfishing, freon or any other tragedy of the commons. Tragedies of the commons drive liberatarians insane and force them into a silly contortionist act to deny that such problems could exist even in principle.

Libertarians attack emminent domain as an example of grave injustice; but with the proposed free market solutions they present to collective action problems(like the construction of bridges, hydroelectric dams, roads and powerlines) are so extraordinarily ineffecient that I doubt that they would even allow for the industrial revolution to occur.

One of the most egregious examples of the sociopathic behaviour of free markets in absense of strong government regulation against fraud is the chinese melamine scandal. See, it's cheaper to make baby formula if you use talc instead of milk. Without regulation the environment becomes criminogenic; like gresham's law, fake products drive real products out of the market; cheaters prospers at the expense of honest producers.

China enacted some weak, token regulation; a simple protein test that checks for nitrogen content. The cheaters responded by including melamine scraps in their baby formula to fraudulently boost the nitrogen content; known to cause kidney stones. It wasn't an unconscionable act by some random sociopath; this was an epidemic of fraud, with dozens of companies and several major producers involved. Note that the free market solutions, e.g. private certifcation of authenticity, was nowhere to be found before the government got on the ball and intervened.

This kind of stuff used to be ubiquitous in the west; but we learned our lesson long ago. Competition has to occur under a framework of regulation that channels self-interest and competition to productive rather than destructive ends.
 
PGH said:
And when that billionaire decides to hire 101 men for his personal police force? Or 1,000?

Did you think this through at all?
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The billionaire would never be able to afford the manpower tens of thousands of subscribers would generate.

Ever.

Further, it would cost the billionaire a fortune to maintain a private army, which is why we don't see private armies today. It takes the coercive power of the State to fund an army.

We know insurance companies would never out-right attack people because they are voluntarily funded and would lose all of their customers if they did engage in such nonsense. Further, they would have to convince their armed force that they should initiate violence against innocent people. This takes a massive amount of propaganda to accomplish. Something only the State is capable of today.
 
michaelsuede said:
It does mean I own the product of my labor.

If I didn't, I wouldn't have a right to trade it.
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Sometimes simplifying things is a mark of intelligence, insight, or even brilliance, but sometimes, like now, it merely means you cannot appreciate connections and nuance.
 
AGW is a joke.

Any arguments to the contrary amount to nothing more than propaganda.

The climate alarmists have been caught red handed manipulating climate models, using bad data, and out-right lying about the cause and effects of climate change.

I'm not going to get into a man-made climate change debate because its so full of crap that it doesn't even need me to bother refuting it.
 
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