Why Im no longer an ACist

[ianlippert]

First question, do you think the majority of Americans care about poor people?

Second question, if the American government is needed to help poor people why doesnt it eliminate poverty? It has more than enough money.

[ALawPoker]

OK, "dramatically decrease" is different than "magically get rid of."

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
If X is listed as the foremost cause of poverty, and X goes away Im assuming that the poster thinks poverty will at least dramaticly decrease without X

[/ QUOTE ]

Government is the primary cause of povery because:

A. They damage the economy, slowing technical, medical, etc. advancement, ensuring that people in the future have worse lifestyles.

B. Governments prevent people from moving out of countries where they're oppressed with immigration laws. (this is probably #1)

C. Government "aid" often makes people reliant on government, so they never develop the skills or motivation they need to become not poor.

[pricklypete]

This thread is a riot.

[govman6767]

Malloy: The United States is a non-smoking nation! No smoking, no drugs, no alcohol, no women - unless you're married - no foul language, no red meat!

Snake Plissken: Land of the free.

Malloy: This is your last chance, hotshot.
Snake Plissken: For what?
Malloy: Freedom.
Snake Plissken: In America? That died a long time ago.

[natedogg]

I actually think that #2 is your weakest critique but I assume that'll get addressed shortly. #3 is just a normative judgment, no right or wrong there. #1 is certainly refutable but it starts with the definition of freedom and coercion. BTW, your issues aren't related to ACism, as a minimal government environment creates these same questions.

natedogg

[AlexM]

1. Some of what you say in this is true, but saying it's because they "ignore/don't care" is just false. Some ACists believe that charity will take care of it, some believe that the ends don't justify the means and some believe that by giving stuff to the poor now (at least excessively), you hurt either the poor themselves or the poor in the future. However, none of these come close to "ignore/don't care" and it's simply irresponsible and slanderous to label them that way. You're saying that you think the ends do justify the means, and that's fine, but someone believing that they don't isn't uncaring. Also, a lot of ACists seem to like making things more black and white than they really are, so they make stronger statements about stuff like this than they probably actually feel. Give most ACists a government where taxes pay for this and only this and it's done at a local level instead of a federal one and I doubt you'll see many complaints. You see all the ACists around here supporting Ron Paul, right? Yet whenever Ron Paul is asked about cutting social welfare type programs he says he has no interest in doing that as president and lists stabilizing them financially as one of the reasons for getting out of Iraq. So even believing that the ends don't justify the means, this type of thing is near the very bottom of our list of things to get rid of.

2. I think you're failing to understand just how powerful the protections our government gives to corporations are. The government isn't there helping to make sure that corporations aren't screwing us over, they're helping them do it and working to pull the wool over our eyes when we start to complain. The things you're talking about will certainly happen in AC to some extent or another, but not nearly as badly as what goes on constantly today. Also, youo seem to think that there won't be private third party efforts to do what you want the government to do here. What's the difference in trusting the government to do this and trusting say Consumer Reports? Or some other consumer advocacy organization? Consumer Reports is the biggest of these types of groups currently but not very big because people mostly rely on government to provide standards, but without that government such groups would thrive and would get the job done just as effectively if not more.

3. It's very nearly impossible for us to predict what property will look like in an anarchist society and I wouldn't worry about this a ton. Either this is a deal-breaker that prevents anarchy from being possible or there's some arrangement to be worked out that we don't understand at this time. Regardless, you can support the moral ideals behind anarchism without having an actual solution for this problem.

[valenzuela]

1)If you say ACists are in favor of slightly coercing some ppl to reduce the coercion of poor kids then nvm my critique.
2)Here is my biggest disagreement with you all, you say that goverment helps corporations etc,etc. Even if that is [censored] up and could be fixed on a goverment, I still prefer the current situation over what I would think would happen on AC, you are just HOPING things will work out they way you say it will, not everyone has the time to go through a lenghty consumer report( a consumer report thay may not even be that accurate and if the consumer report is any good u bet its going to be quite expensive)
3)The point is that I think that issue will almost certainly be a deal-breaker if it doesnt get down to violence.

[AlexM]

[ QUOTE ]
1)If you say ACists are in favor of slightly coercing some ppl to reduce the coercion of poor kids then nvm my critique.

[/ QUOTE ]

Calling it "in favor of" is way too strong. Maybe "don't care so much about". We would definitely rather get the government out and we definitely think that things would be handled better without the government and things would improve. My point was that you calling ACists "uncaring" about this is just plain false.

[ QUOTE ]
not everyone has the time to go through a lenghty consumer report

[/ QUOTE ]

No, they don't. I was merely pointing out an organization that does this, not that it would be exactly like that. Most likely things would get to a point where products would advertise as "Consumer Reports approved"! And put that kind of thing on their label, etc. You don't need details if you don't want them, just an organization you trust to say "yes, this is a good product". Currently people trust the government for that even though the government has a horrible track record and also fails to work for everyone beause everyone has different standards. The thing is that you wouldn't have to research every item, you'd just have to research the organizations approving items. Even that's an exaggeration as it's really a matter of just having enough people researching these groups and paying enough attention that the companies want to make sure they're getting these people's money.

Anyway, even if you're skeptical that this would work, it's not like it would just happen over night. Personally, if we do get AC "somewhere" it would be a test situation and not the entire world at once, so even if it fails, it's not like the whole world is going to go into chaos, so what have we really got to lose? Everyone who's anti AC makes out like "OMG, when this element of AC fails the world is going to explode!!!!" when these things would be tested in much more controlled environments before being adopted by people as a whole.


[ QUOTE ]
3)The point is that I think that issue will almost certainly be a deal-breaker if it doesnt get down to violence.

[/ QUOTE ]

There are certainly valid arguments for why anarchy might be technically impossible due to the property thing, but even if there end up being ultra minarchist countries that exist solely for the purpose of regulating property rights, it's basically the same thing.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
1)If you say ACists are in favor of slightly coercing some ppl to reduce the coercion of poor kids then nvm my critique.
2)Here is my biggest disagreement with you all, you say that goverment helps corporations etc,etc. Even if that is [censored] up and could be fixed on a goverment, I still prefer the current situation over what I would think would happen on AC, you are just HOPING things will work out they way you say it will, not everyone has the time to go through a lenghty consumer report( a consumer report thay may not even be that accurate and if the consumer report is any good u bet its going to be quite expensive)
3)The point is that I think that issue will almost certainly be a deal-breaker if it doesnt get down to violence.

[/ QUOTE ]

Well, here is the solution to #2. No one will ever have to read a Consumer Report on anything. No one has to be competent or spend enough time to make any sort of difficult decision: save one. They only need to spend time choosing a Chooser. Someone that they will then trust to make decisions for them.

If you are saying they are incompetent or dont have the time to even do this then I hope you realize how horrible democracy is.