Libertarians: Stop Using Logic

[pvn]

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How about slavery - do you know which conglomerates have African subs whose chain of supply has slaves in it? Child labor? (That particular one's got a long history - most of which is full of activists getting nowhere for a very long time until government stepped in and put pressure of Nike.)

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OH NOES!!! The child labor bogeyman!

Thank god those poor third-world families have had a significant portion of their income slashed.

Most of the western guilt over child labor comes from those images of kids working under huge steam-driven machines during the indurstrial revolution. Of course, the kids doing the actual dangerous work were *wards of the state* who were farmed out (for profit!) by the government who was supposedly protecting them. No parents actually allowed their kids to work *in those conditions*, though certainly some poor kids *did* work. Just as kids have *always* worked until very, very recently in history. Because if they didn't, their families would have starved. I guess having junior pick beans on your farm when you're dirt-poor is a crime against humanity, right?

If I opened a factory in anytown USA, and put ads in the local paper that said "seeking 8-10 year old kids to run heavy machinery, $0.25/hour" how many parents
do you think would drag their kids down to sign them up?

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Just wait until I start talking about the Libertopian food supply.

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I'm waiting with bated breath.

[adanthar]

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How about slavery - do you know which conglomerates have African subs whose chain of supply has slaves in it? Child labor? (That particular one's got a long history - most of which is full of activists getting nowhere for a very long time until government stepped in and put pressure of Nike.)

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OH NOES!!! The child labor bogeyman!

Thank god those poor third-world families have had a significant portion of their income slashed.

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I'm glad you feel that in Libertopia, employing child labor is a net benefit. Unfortunately, I disagree. Therefore, in Libertopia, where do I find a list of companies employing it, so I can boycott them? If they aren't very good about disclosing that information to me, how am I, a rational consumer, going to make the best possible decision of the choices available?

[valenzuela]

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How about slavery - do you know which conglomerates have African subs whose chain of supply has slaves in it? Child labor? (That particular one's got a long history - most of which is full of activists getting nowhere for a very long time until government stepped in and put pressure of Nike.)

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OH NOES!!! The child labor bogeyman!

Thank god those poor third-world families have had a significant portion of their income slashed.

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I'm glad you feel that child labor is a benefit. Unfortunately, I disagree. Therefore, in Libertopia, where do I find a list of companies employing it, so I can boycott them? If they aren't very good about disclosing that information to me, how am I, a rational consumer, going to make the best possible decision of the choices available?

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If there is enough demand for companies that dont use child labor then companies that dont use child labor will take care of telling customers which of their rival companies use child labor.

[pvn]

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Are you kidding? Every car manufacturer out there is yelling and screaming in their commercials how their cars EXCEED federal safety requirements. No federal regulations are forcing volvo to put 327 airbags in their cars.

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Are you sure you want to use airbags as an example of the market reacting without government interference?

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Do you agree or disagree that companies exceed government safety standards?

Could cars be safer? Yes, LDO. But there's a cost to increasing safety. A lot of people are willing to accept the risk of accidents that kill 0.0026667% (8,000 of 300,000,000) of the population a year in exchange for a cheaper car. Every regulation you tack on puts the cheapest car that much further out of reach for poor people. So how much is the "correct" amount to require? Let's see your cost/benefit analysis. Why is your preferred amount of safety the correct amount?

Of course, those safety enhancements get cheaper and cheaper every year. Think if the current safety standards had been put in place 100 years ago. Nobody would have bought cars, since they would have been unimaginably expensive. But hey, nobody would die! Appeal to emotion FTW!

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As for food, there are numerous privately-funded food inspectors who have HIGHER standards than the FDA. You probably eat food inspected by them all the time and never even think about it. Their reputations (which are the foundations of these businesses) are impeccable, so much so that the FDA doesn't even bother inspecting food that these guys inspect.

Who are these guys? http://kosherquest.org/html/Reliable_Kosher_Symbols.htm

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Okay, let's talk about food in Libertopia.

I'm a lower middle class single adult that can't afford the expensive stuff, but I do have an internet connection. I've got a list of 25 different items that I get every week or so, which varies depending on what's on sale.

How much of my time do I have to spend researching various stamps of approval each week to check whether the private regulatory agency issuing it is legitimate, was legitimate but was recently bought out by a corporate raider who gutted it and is profit-taking from the shell, or is simply a paper mill that issues its certificate out to the highest bidder?

Is there a website that keeps track of all of those, how do I quickly find it, and if I do, can I make sure it isn't bought out by Scientology?

If this system somehow fails and I've had three cases of food poisoning in the last year, all of which caused me to miss work (where I have no sick days because this is Libertopia and they're not mandated), how do I narrow down which of those seals is now unsafe and whom do I avoid/sue?

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Wow, it seems like there's a huge market opportunity there to make this easier for you. How many grocery stores do you think would be proud to stock their shelves with poisoned, uninspected food sold by shady fly-by-nights? Seriously.

You should probably lurk in this forum for a while before strutting in like you're the first person to think of any of this stuff.

[pvn]

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How about slavery - do you know which conglomerates have African subs whose chain of supply has slaves in it? Child labor? (That particular one's got a long history - most of which is full of activists getting nowhere for a very long time until government stepped in and put pressure of Nike.)

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OH NOES!!! The child labor bogeyman!

Thank god those poor third-world families have had a significant portion of their income slashed.

[/ QUOTE ]

I'm glad you feel that in Libertopia, employing child labor is a net benefit. Unfortunately, I disagree. Therefore, in Libertopia, where do I find a list of companies employing it, so I can boycott them? If they aren't very good about disclosing that information to me, how am I, a rational consumer, going to make the best possible decision of the choices available?

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If they don't prove to your satisfaction that they don't use child labor, don't deal with them. Adopt a default position guilty until proven innocent, then you don't have to worry about making a "bad" (according to your own subjective personal preferences) decision.

It's not *my* problem to fill every demand for information you have.

[pvn]

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I consider this argument won.

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Deleted

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Come on. I know you don't agree with me on much and certainly aren't a Paul supporter, but you can't possibly buy into the ridiculous arguments adanthar's been making.

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Im no ACist. But, this is Boro. And its Boro by a lot.


EDIT: but slickpoppa is right... you lost that one

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ZOMG DVAULT!!! CHEERLEADING!!! DO SOMETHING DVAULT!!!!

[Copernicus]

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Without government, corporations would not exist as they are today.

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What flash of inspiration did you need to come up with that? Without government most things would not exist as they are today. In fact, without government we would not exist as we do today, because society is not viable without government.


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Limiting the liability of shareholders to the amount of their investment spreads the burden of bad/evil corporations over all of society instead of concentrating it with those who choose to fund and run the business.

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Try raising capital for any large enterprise without it. Would you invest $1000 in a company with the knowledge that such an investment was really open-ended and you could be called on to fund an additional $1,000,000?

The copororate veil does not protect officers/management from negligent actions that would be a detriment to and therefore "spread the burden" to society.

The lack of understanding of the necessity for the corporate form is equivalent to the lack of understanding of the critical importance of IP protection.

[Richard Tanner]

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Issac do you have anything that can back this assertion up, I've heard you use it several times now.

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Corporations are chartered by the government and the liability of shareholders is limited to the amount of their investment by fiat. More information is available from Wikipedia. Note especially the first paragraph under the heading Economic and social justification and criticism. There is even a quote from Murray Rothbard on the issue, essentially saying that limited liability should be contracted by the investors themselves and should not be provided by government. This would be similar to my "special type of insurance" against the risks of investing in unsound businesses.

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So everything will be a sole propiertorship? And once people (who I assume can read a history book) see that big companies make alot more money what's to stop them from growing their business and saying "we don't have liability anymore".

All they'd need is a security force, and certainly their money could buy one. People will still buy their goods, because it's exactly like life now.

I don't get these arguments, PVN's "Money only rules those who allow it to rule them" nonsense. It rules everyone, that's the idea. Profit motivates good business. In actuality, it only motivates further profit, but usually the two goals allign so it's all good.

Where does this idea that every store will be "Mom and Pop" level come from. Certainly people would be afraid, with total responsibility, to open another store. After all, they can't be in two places at once and if someone messed up at the other store, they go to jail/are out alot of money. But at the same time, as people gather wealth (to say nothing of those that already have it) they'll just become above the "law" (Law here is in quotes as it's not a promise we'll have laws for large, wealthy corperations).

Cody

[adanthar]

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If there is enough demand for companies that dont use child labor then companies that dont use child labor will take care of telling customers which of their rival companies use child labor.

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1)And they know this how?

2)I now see 6 ads from different sneaker companies, all saying that every other company uses child labor. Every company officially denies it. Should I personally buy a ticket to Malaysia to check?

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Are you kidding? Every car manufacturer out there is yelling and screaming in their commercials how their cars EXCEED federal safety requirements. No federal regulations are forcing volvo to put 327 airbags in their cars.

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Are you sure you want to use airbags as an example of the market reacting without government interference?

[/ QUOTE ]

Do you agree or disagree that companies exceed government safety standards?

Could cars be safer? Yes, LDO. But there's a cost to increasing safety. A lot of people are willing to accept the risk of accidents that kill 0.0026667% (8,000 of 300,000,000) of the population a year in exchange for a cheaper car. Every regulation you tack on puts the cheapest car that much further out of reach for poor people. So how much is the "correct" amount to require? Let's see your cost/benefit analysis. Why is your preferred amount of safety the correct amount?

Of course, those safety enhancements get cheaper and cheaper every year. Think if the current safety standards had been put in place 100 years ago. Nobody would have bought cars, since they would have been unimaginably expensive. But hey, nobody would die! Appeal to emotion FTW!

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After two decades of the government prodding them to put airbags in in the first place, yes, most cars exceed minimum government safety standards. Others don't - that's why there's a minimum.

It's also true that there's a cost to increasing safety. It's an easy argument to make, because you can make it ad infinitum - "if we'd mandated pollution controls on cars made in 1890, nobody would have bothered with internal combustion". When you take it to the "hey, I need four wheels and a trunk, here's 50 bucks = OK" extreme, it's pretty absurd, because, once again, it assumes the perfectly educated consumer who can adequately assess his own risk at every turn. Ford knew about the Pinto's fuel tank, but calculated that the lawsuits would be worth it (even with the heavy government regulation involved, mind you.) Did the consumer know? Of course not. When did they find out? When the government's very expensive, large fleet of lawyers hauled it out of a gigantic, forced discovery document by document.

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Wow, it seems like there's a huge market opportunity there to make this easier for you. How many grocery stores do you think would be proud to stock their shelves with poisoned, uninspected food sold by shady fly-by-nights? Seriously.

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How many grocers - ie, 18 year olds paid $8 an hour to stand behind a counter - have a clue that their meat is infected with e-coli? In Libertopia, are they standing there and personally butchering the cow? Is there a trade mag dedicated solely to the "we feed our cattle parts of other cattle" ratings of every cattle ranch between here and California that my corner deli has to subscribe to?

[adanthar]

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It's not *my* problem to fill every demand for information you have.

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So you admit that the 'rational consumer = perfect morality' model, the cornerstone of libertarian thought, is flawed.

Why, then, would I ever on God's green earth want to live in Libertopia?