Trans-Fascism

[Copernicus]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
BTW, I do not intend to hang around too much in this "dialogue". It has been my experience with "debating" ACers that, sooner or later, it becomes a circular argument. I would not be surprised if there are some papers by evolutionary psychologists that demonstrate Darwinian principles that dictate against anarcho-anything.

There is no god, and there is no anarchy in the real world. There is religion, and there are ACers.


[/ QUOTE ]

Mainly because the people that argue with ACers never refute their points. The ACers have to go over the same points because the people arent willing to realise that they arent making logical arguements.

[/ QUOTE ]

Theory (ie logical arguments) that disregard the outcome/current state of every single civilization in recorded history arent any better than disproven theories based on bad logic.

[/ QUOTE ]

Exactly! This is exactly the problem with arguing with statists. The entire history of civilization shows just how bad statist solutions are, yet they refuse to open their mind to other possibilities and persist in their disproven theories. The beauty of AC is that while it may or may not not work in practice, it hasn't actually been disproven yet.

[/ QUOTE ]

Statist solutions have gotten us to where we are today. If you think the state of civilization is bad, I feel sorry for you. with the exception of religious fundamentalism I think things have been pretty damn good.

AC has been disproven. The natural state of just about everything in the universe starts at and ends with randomness and chaos...anarchy. Yet every single complex organism has evolved some sort of rules of organization to survive. Every single long term association of 3 or more human beings has evolved into a "statist" solution. While in the realm of pure logic absence may not constitute disproof, in the world of science it is an indication that the probabilities are so small as to constitute disproof.

This thread, in fact, has me quite convinced that there is an evolutionary bias against AC.

[/ QUOTE ]

You conflate anarchy and chaos. Try again.

[/ QUOTE ]

You don't understand chaos. Try again.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The question is quite simple. Either transfats do have negative effects on others or your comparison of them to Ebola and tobacco is fatally flawed. One or the other. If you think the comparison is not flawed, please answer the question.

[/ QUOTE ]They do. And I said as much a dozen posts ago. Where's the problem?

[/ QUOTE ]

Where? What are these negative effects that transfats have on others? Before, I asked if you knew of any such effects on other people (other than the people actually eating the transfats) and you said

[ QUOTE ]
None of the above, as far as I know.

[/ QUOTE ]

Now you're saying that transfats DO have effects on people who don't eat them? Which is it?

[ QUOTE ]
I also said that it's a matter of degree. In other words, I advised you to put something like "it depends" in your life. Transfats are bad for your health, but, most probably, not nearly as much as cyanide. Wild guess.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, not what I asked.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants, then, would be a good solution, right?

[/ QUOTE ] Yes, I would imagine it would be a good thing, sorry. I mean, I would vote for it to become law, if it's not already. I mean, I would hate to do the "research" myself eating out in restaurants! I'd rather have some tyranny [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img] imposed on restaurant owners, and forbid them from serving me cyanide (or Polonius -- more modern!), instead of "making my choice as a consumer". F*ck that.

[/ QUOTE ]

Some more of that "non-misrepresentation" you're famous for. What word did you helpfully leave out of that quote? Oh yeah. "Just".

Here it is again.

[ QUOTE ]
OK, so just banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants, then, would be a good solution, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

This is (obviously) drawing a parallel to the transfat ban. Since cyanide is "bad" is banning it ONLY in restaurants a good solution? Because that what's happening in NYC with transfat. If this stuff is so bad and has no redeeming qualities why is it only being banned in restaurants? Why not *everywhere*?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I already accepted that one should be free to do to oneself whatever one pleases.

[/ QUOTE ]
No, you didn't. You said that, but you support restraint on people doing to themselves whatever they please. By, in this example, refusing to "allow free and unfettered production, manufacture, and trade" of cyanide and/or transfat.

[/ QUOTE ] That's right. See if you can spot the difference between harming oneself, and society making stuff that can harm oneself available as easily as stuff that doesn't.

[/ QUOTE ]

Baseball bats can be used to harm oneself, but they are available over the counter, without a prescription. Think of the children!

Society doesn't "make stuff available". There's no advocation that transfats be delivered to each citizen's door every morning. No one is pushing to mandate that big bowls of it be installed on every street corner.

[ QUOTE ]
You wanna throw away all the practical benefits that scientific knowledge can offer to society, but you don't realize it.

[/ QUOTE ]

I have no idea what that means. I don't find someone else telling me what I can and cannot trade to be a "benefit" to me. Oh, wait, I get it. You know what's best. For everyone. Right, I forgot that part.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You start with the presumption of guilt; the parties seeking to do anything must prove to your satisfaction that what they seek to do is acceptable; all other actions are denied. Only those actions you approve may be undertaken.

[/ QUOTE ] Where do you get all these weird (and unfounded) ideas? I never advocated presumption of guilt !

[/ QUOTE ]

When you have a default position of "everything must be denied until I am satisfied that it is safe/wholesome/clean/whathaveyou, you begin your evaluation of everything with a presumption of guilt. Not necessarily in the strict legal sense, but in a broader sense (open your mind just a bit here). You also begin with the presumption that other people are not as qualified as you are to make this judgement.

And we know that you DO begin with this stance, because you've admitted it when you said your evaluation lead to the "close call" judgement, and that prompted you to push regulation. In the absense of clear evidence, deny everything. If Johnny can't prove he isn't a danger to society, lock him up.

[ QUOTE ]
If I must recall something, all I remember is words to the effect that when corporate profitability is the motive, we must be generally careful with the proposition. Not much more than this.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's great. You decide what ever level of caution makes you feel good. I'll decide mine.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You admit over and over that the transfat decision only impacts the individual, but you keep wanting to compare it to a decision [about trading Ebola viruses] that affects others.

[/ QUOTE ] So trading in cyanide is alright with you, then?

[/ QUOTE ]

Sure. Why wouldn't it be?

[ QUOTE ]
I already know that you are against state licences for drug stores and the like, so anyone should be allowed to sell cyanide (and other "non-contaminant" instruments of death) freely to anyone else. Do I have this right ?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. Voluntary trade isn't a danger to anyone else.

When Jack muders Jim with a baseball bat, do you blame Sam, who sold Jack the bat? Did the transaction between them harm anyone?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I filter through nothing.

[/ QUOTE ]Except for the all-magical, all-curing powers of free and unfettered capital. Which is now mostly shackled and must be set free, free to the level of anarchy --capital that is.

Forgive me for mislabelling your way of thinking...

[/ QUOTE ]

Where have I mentioned anything about capital? I have no attachment to it, no particular fondness for it. You're the one obsessed with it, trying to interject it anywhere you can.

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Concerted action is wonderful. Votes are great. Collective decisions are peachy.

Imposing those upon people who don't voluntarily enter the process is distinguishing feature of tyrants and nannies.

[/ QUOTE ] Seriously, this is where we differ, as usual. You see society as the first step towards tyranny (=majority rule); I see society as the inevitable, though of course imperfect, way of humans living together. Hell, I think it's highly practical as well!

[/ QUOTE ]

I think society is inevitable, and highly practical.

"Society" does not mean "majority rule".

[ QUOTE ]
There is no such thing as total freedom. There are few "totals" or "absolutes" in the universe that I know, come to think of it. The pursuit of "total freedom" can be a noble cause, but only as long as we understand, Sisyphus-like, that it's impossible.

[/ QUOTE ]

True. That doesn't give you or anyone else a license to further violate it, any more than the fact that murder will never be 100% eliminated gives anyone license to engage in murdering.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
That's what you seek to destroy. One's preference. Individuals must submit to the preference of the collective! Interactions must be controlled, approved, monitored. Consensus is the end-all-be-all. Variation is the enemy!

[/ QUOTE ] Nope. Variation is here to stay. There exist no tangible "essences", no living "averages", no actual "typicalities" -- there's only variance. From the time the Earth was created until now. There's only us, all differing from a theoretical models.

Consensus is not the "cure-all" either. There is no "cure-all"! But living amongst other humans, obliges us to compromise and not to have "our way" all the time.

[/ QUOTE ]

Again, the need for compromise doesn't give you, or anyone else, license to engage in the bargaining process on my behalf and bind me to the agreements of others.

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
When you have a default position of "everything must be denied until I am satisfied that it is safe/wholesome/clean/whathaveyou", you begin your evaluation of everything with a presumption of guilt. Not necessarily in the strict legal sense, but in a broader sense (open your mind just a bit here). You also begin with the presumption that other people are not as qualified as you are to make this judgement.


[/ QUOTE ]Total and arbitrary misrepresentation of what I stand for and what I've posted so far on the subject of political systems and human choices. And I never passed myself as the "ultimate expert" on anything. So scrap everything and start anew. You are way off the mark.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Living amongst other humans, obliges us to compromise and not to have "our way" all the time.

[/ QUOTE ] The need for compromise doesn't give you, or anyone else, license to engage in the bargaining process on my behalf and bind me to the agreements of others.

[/ QUOTE ] Again: It is extremely impractical to either negotiate everything in person or never agree to anything otherwise. I do realize and understand and sympathize with the quest for direct democracy but the numbers, if anything, do not allow it. Perhaps in an all-wired future whereby we would be constantly and instantly "voting" for our preferences, that might be possible...


[ QUOTE ]
Some more of that "non-misrepresentation" you're famous for. What word did you helpfully leave out of that quote? Oh yeah. "Just".

Here it is again. [ QUOTE ]
OK, so just banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants, then, would be a good solution, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ] I bolded the part I snipped. Are you seriously claiming that the meaning is somehow changed when that part is omitted??

I said I try to use quotes upon quotes but I will not quote everything. (Yes, I could be just hitting the "Quote" button and quoting the whole post, but that'd be a cop out. Some arguments must be addressed point by point.) You claim I misrepresent others' position so often that I'm "famous for it" ?? Well, that's what an ad hominem looks like, if you must know.

Join the select number of flamers who routinely try to smear my integrity here. This accreditation must mean a lot to you.

[ QUOTE ]
Now you're saying that transfats DO have effects on people who don't eat them? Which is it?

[/ QUOTE ] I'm sorry for the typo. It should read of course "they don't", as is obvious from the context of my posts. (I.e. when I gorge on transfats, I'm not physically harming anyone else.) But feast on the typo.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I also said that it's a matter of degree. In other words, I advised you to put something like "it depends" in your life. Transfats are bad for your health, but, most probably, not nearly as much as cyanide. Wild guess.


[/ QUOTE ]Again, not what I asked.

[/ QUOTE ] But that's the heart of the matter! Not every substance on earth is supposed to be treated the same way. Some stuff is so harmful to everyone that it should be highly regulated or banned. There are competent people for that, or there should be. Not everyone can go around carrying sets of Little Chemist to test the food, kinda spoils the whole purpose of a dinner date. And the ban should be enforced by the state's law enforcement authorities, yes.

Other stuff is so harmless that toddlers should be allowed to feast on it. In-between, we examine and act accordingly. In short, "it depends".

The sole criterion for what we do with stuff is not your (crippled) red herring of "Will it harm others". Sorry.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You wanna throw away all the practical benefits that scientific knowledge can offer to society, but you don't realize it.

[/ QUOTE ] I don't find someone else telling me what I can and cannot trade to be a "benefit" to me.

[/ QUOTE ]I'm sure you'd want to be able to be free to trade in everything under the sun -- and then some. But the interest of the many individuals sometimes supersedes the interest of one individual. The lone individual may well think that he is been wronged in al such cases. But then he should walk away from the society of the many and live the life of Crusoe.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
OK, so just banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants would be a good solution, right?


[/ QUOTE ] This is (obviously) drawing a parallel to the transfat ban. Since cyanide is "bad" is banning it ONLY in restaurants a good solution? Because that what's happening in NYC with transfat. If this stuff is so bad and has no redeeming qualities why is it only being banned in restaurants? Why not *everywhere*?

[/ QUOTE ]Because you cannot say "it depends" if your life depended on it. No, actually I'm joking. You can say "it depends", if your life depended on it. I'm pretty sure.

You do realize it would be stupid to ban everywhere a substance that is very dangerous under certain circumstances (Wiki : "...delivered in the form of gaseous hydrogen cyanide, it is poisonous") but also very useful under different circumstances (Wiki : "...the cyanide compound sodium nitroprusside is occasionally used in emergency medical situations to produce a rapid decrease in blood pressure in humans; it is also used as a vasodilator in vascular research") -- don't you?

Why can't you start getting acclimatized with these two words, "it" and "depends" ? They are less lethal than transfats, trust me. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
I think society is inevitable, and highly practical. "Society" does not mean "majority rule".

[/ QUOTE ] No, of course not. Society means everybody does everything everybody wants every time. You are right. Either a decision (for anything) is unanimous or there is no decision at all.

Yes, I know your standard response: Let those who want measure X abide by it, but don't let them force measure X upon me when I disagree! Yep. Let the majority decide on, for example, the color of traffic lights. You should be free to make red lights a sign to accelerate at the intersection, and green lights a sign to stop.

<font color="red">Down </font> with <font color="green"> tyranny</font>. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[ QUOTE ]
Baseball bats can be used to harm oneself, but they are available over the counter, without a prescription. Think of the children!

[/ QUOTE ]Right... Baseball bats. And children. Try again. This is not worthy of a response.

[ QUOTE ]
When Jack murders Jim with a baseball bat, do you blame Sam, who sold Jack the bat? Did the transaction between them harm anyone?

[/ QUOTE ]Beyond a certain level of lethal attributes, the "baseball" seller is guilty of facilitating crime, that's right. If, instead of a baseball, Sam sells to Jack a body-belt loaded with sticks of dynamite and a trigger button, Sam is selling Jim something that can only be used for a criminal purpose. I think the rest of us individuals, as a group, should closely monitor what the hell Sam is doing in his little shop - and possibly arrest his ass for such "trades". You obviously think every trade should be free, until the "market" decides.

Well, we will never agree on that.

[ QUOTE ]
Where have I mentioned anything about capital?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

[/ QUOTE ] Oh so you're not obsessing with the freedom of capital and said freedom's ability to cure most everyone of our ills, economic and what-not? You're not? My mistake. I thought the C in AC stood for Capitalism.

What's the term stand for, then, Anarcho-Catheter?

Mickey Brausch

[ShakeZula06]

[ QUOTE ]
Statist solutions have gotten us to where we are today.

[/ QUOTE ]
lol. Any actual content to back up that assertion?
[ QUOTE ]
If you think the state of civilization is bad, I feel sorry for you. with the exception of religious fundamentalism I think things have been pretty damn good.


[/ QUOTE ]
yes, and it's 'pretty damn good' because of capitalism *in spite* of state intervention, not because of government intervention. One doesn't have to look farther then the effects of corporate capitalism, rampant government cronyism, the hundreds of millions killed in the 20th century from statism, hundreds of billions of dollars and thousands of lives spent on a war that was concocted from falsehoods, or $2.3 trillion 'missing' in government funds.

What good has the state done again?
[ QUOTE ]
AC has been disproven. The natural state of just about everything in the universe starts at and ends with randomness and chaos...anarchy.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think you understand what the words disproven, anarchy, or chaos means.
[ QUOTE ]
Yet every single complex organism has evolved some sort of rules of organization to survive.

[/ QUOTE ]
Oh God are you calling association of people a complex organism now?
[ QUOTE ]
Every single long term association of 3 or more human beings has evolved into a "statist" solution.

[/ QUOTE ]
False. Me working at a job for more then three years or associating with friends and family hasn't been enforced by some magical wave of a wand by a state.
[ QUOTE ]
While in the realm of pure logic absence may not constitute disproof, in the world of science it is an indication that the probabilities are so small as to constitute disproof.

[/ QUOTE ]
This sentence doesn't even make sense.

[pvn]

[ QUOTE ]
Total and arbitrary misrepresentation of what I stand for and what I've posted so far on the subject of political systems and human choices. And I never passed myself as the "ultimate expert" on anything. So scrap everything and start anew. You are way off the mark.

[/ QUOTE ]

Telling yourself this may make you feel better but it doesn't change the facts; your default stance is still "regulate until proven otherwise".

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
The need for compromise doesn't give you, or anyone else, license to engage in the bargaining process on my behalf and bind me to the agreements of others.

[/ QUOTE ] Again: It is extremely impractical to either negotiate everything in person or never agree to anything otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with that. But that still does not give anyone else the right to negotiate on someone else's behalf without explicit consent. People are perfectly capable of entering into such collective bargaining on a voluntary basis.

[ QUOTE ]
I do realize and understand and sympathize with the quest for direct democracy but the numbers, if anything, do not allow it. Perhaps in an all-wired future whereby we would be constantly and instantly "voting" for our preferences, that might be possible...

[/ QUOTE ]

This has nothing to do with what I'm saying, so I'm not sure where you're going. Whether the process is direct democracy or representative democracy or one single guy making arbitrary decisions based on his own personal preferences makes no difference at all to me. The only thing that concerns me is who is bound by those decisions - did they voluntarily agree to such a decision making process or not?


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Some more of that "non-misrepresentation" you're famous for. What word did you helpfully leave out of that quote? Oh yeah. "Just".

Here it is again. [ QUOTE ]
OK, so just banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants, then, would be a good solution, right?

[/ QUOTE ]

[/ QUOTE ] I bolded the part I snipped. Are you seriously claiming that the meaning is somehow changed when that part is omitted??

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes. The point of that question was to show the ridiculousness of banning XYZ because it's bad, but doing so in a half-assed manner. If substance XYZ is harmful and should be violently prohibited in restaurant food then is it not also harmful in grocery store food and home-cooked food?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Now you're saying that transfats DO have effects on people who don't eat them? Which is it?

[/ QUOTE ] I'm sorry for the typo. It should read of course "they don't", as is obvious from the context of my posts. (I.e. when I gorge on transfats, I'm not physically harming anyone else.) But feast on the typo.

[/ QUOTE ]

It wasn't obvious at all to me. The if they don't, you must acknowledge that your constant comparison of the substance to ebola is flawed.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I also said that it's a matter of degree. In other words, I advised you to put something like "it depends" in your life. Transfats are bad for your health, but, most probably, not nearly as much as cyanide. Wild guess.


[/ QUOTE ]Again, not what I asked.

[/ QUOTE ] But that's the heart of the matter! Not every substance on earth is supposed to be treated the same way.

[/ QUOTE ]

I agree with that. I treat the football I own quite differently than the crystal wine glasses I own. But I didn't need an overlord to give me guidelines on how to handle them and violently enforce them.

[ QUOTE ]
Some stuff is so harmful to everyone that it should be highly regulated or banned. There are competent people for that, or there should be.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right, because I'm too incompetent to figure out on my own that if I play football with fine crystal, I stand a good chance of breaking it (and possibly cutting myself!).

[ QUOTE ]
Not everyone can go around carrying sets of Little Chemist to test the food, kinda spoils the whole purpose of a dinner date.

[/ QUOTE ]

Right. because only the government is capable of testing the food. And it's not enough for them to just tell you what's "good" and what's "bad", they have to actually prevent you from eating the bad stuff. Because us dumb yokels are so dumb!!!

[ QUOTE ]
Other stuff is so harmless that toddlers should be allowed to feast on it. In-between, we examine and act accordingly. In short, "it depends".

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, you keep saying that. Nobody has disputed that "it depends". Since you're so obsessed with this mantra, you should recognize that coercive government dictats ignore this. Such prohibitions declare that X is good and Y is bad. There's no room for exceptions. If your particular scenario wasn't forseen by the omniscient central planners, well, too bad. You keep chanting "it depends" as if you're opposed to definitive, absolute judgements, but you're pushing for them the whole time.

[ QUOTE ]
The sole criterion for what we do with stuff is not your (crippled) red herring of "Will it harm others". Sorry.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well what IS it, then? You have said you don't want to tell people what to do in matters that only involve the single individual (even though your arguments expose this as a falsehood). (remember? You said "I already said that IMHO a person should be left alone to do to himself whatever he wants.")

So if you exclude actions that only harm the individual choosing to perform that action (which you don't actually want to exclude, since you're for regulations on transfat consumption (even though you admit it harms nobody other than the one choosing to consume it)) and actions which harm nobody (which you don't actually want to exclude, since you're for regulations on voluntary trade) from your regulatory regime, what does that leave you with?

Can you give me an example of an action that does not fall into one of these three categories?

1) harms nobody
2) harms only the person performing the action
3) harms other people

Any example.

Now, which ones do you feel the need to regulate? Be honest. With yourself. The rest of us already know the answer.


[ QUOTE ]
I'm sure you'd want to be able to be free to trade in everything under the sun -- and then some. But the interest of the many individuals sometimes supersedes the interest of one individual.

[/ QUOTE ]

Mob rule!

[ QUOTE ]
The lone individual may well think that he is been wronged in al such cases. But then he should walk away from the society of the many and live the life of Crusoe.

[/ QUOTE ]

Might makes right! Love it or leave it!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
OK, so just banning cyanide in, for example, restaurants would be a good solution, right?


[/ QUOTE ] This is (obviously) drawing a parallel to the transfat ban. Since cyanide is "bad" is banning it ONLY in restaurants a good solution? Because that what's happening in NYC with transfat. If this stuff is so bad and has no redeeming qualities why is it only being banned in restaurants? Why not *everywhere*?

[/ QUOTE ]Because you cannot say "it depends" if your life depended on it. No, actually I'm joking. You can say "it depends", if your life depended on it. I'm pretty sure.

[/ QUOTE ]

What "depends"? The harmfulness? It depends on what? The location where the substance is consumed? How is this anything other than a backpedling admission that such prohibitions are completely arbitrary? "It depends... on the whims of a small number of people on a given day."

[ QUOTE ]
You do realize it would be stupid to ban everywhere a substance that is very dangerous under certain circumstances (Wiki : "...delivered in the form of gaseous hydrogen cyanide, it is poisonous") but also very useful under different circumstances (Wiki : "...the cyanide compound sodium nitroprusside is occasionally used in emergency medical situations to produce a rapid decrease in blood pressure in humans; it is also used as a vasodilator in vascular research") -- don't you?

[/ QUOTE ]

So consumption of transfats is bad in restaurants, but not bad if you get it at the grocery and brign it home?

[ QUOTE ]
Why can't you start getting acclimatized with these two words, "it" and "depends" ? They are less lethal than transfats, trust me. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

[/ QUOTE ]

You're removing my ability to determine that! I think it depends on things like my PERSONAL tolerance for danger, my PERSONAL history with the substance (how much I've eaten recently, how poorly my body reacts to it). But no, you're saying it DOES NOT depend - it's ALWAYS unacceptible to eat transfat in a restaurant. Cant' you see that IT DEPENDS??? Try it sometimes.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
I think society is inevitable, and highly practical. "Society" does not mean "majority rule".

[/ QUOTE ] No, of course not. Society means everybody does everything everybody wants every time. You are right. Either a decision (for anything) is unanimous or there is no decision at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow. The alternative to majority decision imposed upon everyone is unanimous agreement or no decision at all. Right. I painted my house blue, and my neighbor painted his white. The decision of what color each house should be painted was not the result of a majority rules process; neither was it unanimous. There was individual variation based on personal preferences. Apparently the idea that people can make decisions for themselves, even if they disagree with everyone else or even just a majority of people seems to be a new one for you.

[ QUOTE ]
Yes, I know your standard response: Let those who want measure X abide by it, but don't let them force measure X upon me when I disagree! Yep. Let the majority decide on, for example, the color of traffic lights. You should be free to make red lights a sign to accelerate at the intersection, and green lights a sign to stop.

[/ QUOTE ]

How many times have you used this strawman? Please, start a seperate thread on it, I'm more than happy to talk about this one at length.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Baseball bats can be used to harm oneself, but they are available over the counter, without a prescription. Think of the children!

[/ QUOTE ]Right... Baseball bats. And children. Try again. This is not worthy of a response.

[ QUOTE ]
When Jack murders Jim with a baseball bat, do you blame Sam, who sold Jack the bat? Did the transaction between them harm anyone?

[/ QUOTE ]Beyond a certain level of lethal attributes, the "baseball" seller is guilty of facilitating crime, that's right.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wow. I wonder if my sporting goods store knows of the huge liabilty they're facing. Perhaps some psychological background exams should be ordered for anyone wishing to buy a bat. And telephone cords. I mean, I could easily strangle someone with it.

[ QUOTE ]
If, instead of a baseball, Sam sells to Jack a body-belt loaded with sticks of dynamite and a trigger button, Sam is selling Jim something that can only be used for a criminal purpose. I think the rest of us individuals, as a group, should closely monitor what the hell Sam is doing in his little shop - and possibly arrest his ass for such "trades". You obviously think every trade should be free, until the "market" decides.

[/ QUOTE ]

OK, let's go with this. Let's allow, just for this discussion, that there is a case where you have a product that can only be used for criminal purposes, AND that trade in such product should be prohibited, legitimately.

Now, how do you get from that to transfat bans?

Hint: it's not a matter of degree!

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Where have I mentioned anything about capital?
When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail, right?

[/ QUOTE ] Oh so you're not obsessing with the freedom of capital and said freedom's ability to cure most everyone of our ills, economic and what-not? You're not? My mistake. I thought the C in AC stood for Capitalism.

[/ QUOTE ]

The same old tripe, with the same "cure-all" strawman thrown in. You can call it whatever you want. A rose by any other name would smell as sweet.

[natedogg]

Mickey is a fascist with no respect for individual liberty in any meaningful sense. You can't argue with someone like that.

natedogg

[adios]

Maybe they could resolve this with separate licensces for restaurants that want to use trans fats and those that don't. Charge more for the licenses to restaurants that want to use trans fats and have restaurants clearly communicate whether or not they're using trans fats to their customers.

[natedogg]

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe they could resolve this with separate licensces for restaurants that want to use trans fats and those that don't. Charge more for the licenses to restaurants that want to use trans fats and have restaurants clearly communicate whether or not they're using trans fats to their customers.

[/ QUOTE ]

i can't wait to hear the reasons why this is unacceptable and no one should be allowed to even have the choice of eating transfats. This will be good.

natedogg

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
Mickey is a fascist with no respect for individual liberty in any meaningful sense.

[/ QUOTE ]How can you expect much meaningful dialogue after such displays of cluelessness? You probably don't want to have any.

[Mickey Brausch]

[ QUOTE ]
Telling yourself this may make you feel better but it doesn't change the facts; your default stance is still "regulate until proven otherwise".

[/ QUOTE ] You know best, dear. What was that about erecting straw men and then fighting them? Or the one about misrepresentation of the other party's position? Obviously the commentary was based on inside experience.


[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
It is extremely impractical to either negotiate everything in person or never agree to anything otherwise.

[/ QUOTE ]That still does not give anyone else the right to negotiate on someone else's behalf without explicit consent. People are perfectly capable of entering into such collective bargaining on a voluntary basis.

[/ QUOTE ] So without explicit consent and authorisation, no agreement between two or more persons whatsoever in a society, right? Right. Instead of a totally paralysing impracticality, we are to have a mildly paralysing impracticality!

[ QUOTE ]
Whether the process is direct democracy or representative democracy or one single guy making arbitrary decisions based on his own personal preferences makes no difference at all to me. The only thing that concerns me is who is bound by those decisions - did they voluntarily agree to such a decision making process or not?

[/ QUOTE ]In societies comprised by more than mere thousands of people, i.e. every modern society, various assumptions must take effect lest we start from zero every time two or more interact in any way. One such assumption, for instance, is that those who belong to said society are bound by rules that have been there before they joined and, implicitly, before they gave their consent for them. And if they wanna change (some of) them, including the way such rules are changed, as such, they have to work to get their way. If they are ACers and succeed, bingo. If they don't, it's the ol' choice between (a) abide and keep agitating, or (b) leave it. Don't take it the wrong way; it's the sensible thing.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Not every substance on earth is supposed to be treated the same way.

[/ QUOTE ] I agree with that. I treat the football I own quite differently than the crystal wine glasses I own. But I didn't need an overlord to give me guidelines on how to handle them and violently enforce them.

[/ QUOTE ]Some of our fellow citizens, on account of their knowledge have been elected to act as experts (or appointed by elected representatives who have been mandated to appoint such folks). Some times, the opinion of such experts carries more than advisory weight. On account of the nature of the issue being examined, we have given them enforcement powers, e.g. to ban substance XYZ from drinking water because it is seriously harmful for health.

You might argue that you have not consented to such an authority been given to those people; or you might argue that the fact itself that these people are working for the government makes them tyrannical by definition. Nonetheless, such a process is aside from all else practical, in ways your Little Chemist testing the drinking water every time he drinks from the tap, or your Restaurant Taster trying out his chances in the totally unregulated restaurant possibly serving tasty but poisonous food, just cannot be.

Try running a poll among posters here on 2+2 : How many people would rather have your kind of "anarchy" in, say, restaurant food, instead of the (flawed, bureaucratic, slow) alternative of government regulatory authorities? Who'll be offering relatively better assurance to those eating out on the town, your free-for-all-and-let-the-consumer-beware system, or the current flawed but strict system?

[ QUOTE ]
Wow. The alternative to majority decision imposed upon everyone is unanimous agreement or no decision at all. Right. I painted my house blue, and my neighbour painted his white. The decision of what colour each house should be painted was not the result of a majority rules process; neither was it unanimous.

[/ QUOTE ] Don't get carried away. Government is not supposed to regulate or fix everything. I'm arguing for a minimum of responsibility that elected representatives, if not for anything else, for practical reasons, must be assigned with. Such as police work, specification enforcement, etc.

Come to think of it, sometimes a bunch of people choose to have their neighbourhood/town/city organized around a grand plan -- so they have zoning regulations (e.g. you cannot open a McDonalds in some spots; you cannot have buildings higher than X storeys; etc). Among such regulations, sometimes are colours of houses, or the design of the houses themselves. In Britain, this is quite common.

Take your tent elsewhere if your don't like it in our part of the world, they'll tell you.

[ QUOTE ]
Consumption of transfats is bad in restaurants, but not bad if you get it at the grocery and bring it home?

[/ QUOTE ] Try to figure it out. It's not that hard.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Beyond a certain level of lethal attributes, the "baseball" seller is guilty of facilitating crime, that's right.

[/ QUOTE ] Wow. I wonder if my sporting goods store knows of the huge liability they're facing. Perhaps some psychological background exams should be ordered for anyone wishing to buy a bat.

[/ QUOTE ] Do comedy as much as you want, but you keep missing the point. Check out the brackets again. Read back what I wrote. Beyond a certain level of lethal attributes, we are not talking about common things anymore, but about weapons, at least. When that something is a weapon, we write "baseball" when in reality it might be anything from a pistol to a suicide bomber's belt.

[ QUOTE ]
Let's allow, just for this discussion, that there is a case where you have a product that can only be used for criminal purposes, AND that trade in such product should be prohibited, legitimately.

Now, how do you get from that to transfat bans?

Hint: it's not a matter of degree!

[/ QUOTE ] Oh but is it! That's the whole point. (You spent three entire paragraphs in your post mocking my use of "it depends" - and I am not responding to that. Suffice to say that you still don't get what "it depends" truly means!)

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
You should be free to make red lights a sign to accelerate at the intersection, and green lights a sign to stop.

[/ QUOTE ] How many times have you used this straw man? Please, start a separate thread on it, I'm more than happy to talk about this one at length.

[/ QUOTE ] Sure you are. But no need to go at it at length. I say, AC breaks down at the merest of close examinations. (Sklansky very casually devastated some choice tenet of it, only too recently.) You say, nah, bollocks, AC rules. So why don't you give us the cliff notes (no need for "at length" or "separate threads") about traffic lights?

Right, I forgot -- in order for it work we must have all roads privatised.

Silly fascist me, I keep forgetting it.

Mickey Brausch