Libertarians: Stop Using Logic

[slickpoppa]

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I consider this argument won.

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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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I frankly haven't read much of the thread; I just thought declaring victory was a bit over the top. For one, some other ACist will surely do it for you, and two, it sounds kind of trite doing it yourself. Of course you think you won the argument.

I probably should read the thread, though, since you and adanthar may be the two smartest posters on the forum.

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Borodog pulled the same crap when I got into an argument with him about the odds of the best pros winning the WSOP ME, even though my estimate was much closer to the "correct" odds (as determined by Sklansky). Borodog can quite childish sometimes.

Anyway, this thread is pointless. It's a typical "Let's have a circle jerk about how stupid non-AC people are" thread.

[adanthar]

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I consider this argument won.

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Since you consider it won, where are the replies to all of my meta-points about what this vote actually means from the world view of the Great Libertarian Struggle?

From everything I understand about Libertopia, the market is supposed to act against genocide via the rational consumer/stockholder, who reads about Darfur, immediately phones up his investment banker and tells him to stop dealing with those evil bastards over in Khartoum. But wait - how does the consumer know which of his investments have anything to do with Darfur? The government isn't going to tell him, and neither is his i-banker (odds are he doesn't know, anyway). Whistleblowers are, of course, fired by the company at will and have no recourse. The media has better things to focus on, such as the missing white girl of the week. So where's this information coming from? How is our hero, x 300 million, possibly going to stop buying goods from Sudan with no government intervention when he doesn't even have a clue what they are?

But okay, that's sort of tangential, as well. The real core idea behind the whole belief system, and the part that makes it palatable, is that the market does, somehow, correct itself for morality - in fact, as Borodog is busy 'lol'ling at me, he clearly thinks that the market can do it faster and better than the government can. Fine. Why is Ron Paul, Libertopian Champion, saying that the right of the investor to sue the pension manager for mishandling his funds by divesting from genocide outweighs the right of the manager to divest from genocide? Think about it - in our glorious humanitarian marketplace, isn't that never supposed to happen to begin with? Since when does a rational consumer ever sue a pension manager for pulling out of Sudan?

Well, apparently, it's been happening since the part where nobody gives a damn and the whole thing is based around the largest profit margin. Which brings me back to my actual point: Ron Paul is a fringe loon who'd rather vote for my right to sue my broker for daring to do the right thing than for that broker's right to stop indirectly buying the janjaweed helicopters.

[owsley]

And our current government has done such a great job of stopping genocides? It has let this one in darfur go on and on and on, it let the one in 1994 in rwanda happen, there are others, but my point is made.

[Scary_Tiger]

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Possibly Too Level Headed

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adanthar needs a new title.

[Borodog]

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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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I frankly haven't read much of the thread; I just thought declaring victory was a bit over the top. For one, some other ACist will surely do it for you, and two, it sounds kind of trite doing it yourself. Of course you think you won the argument.

I probably should read the thread, though, since you and adanthar may be the two smartest posters on the forum.

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Borodog pulled the same crap when I got into an argument with him about the odds of the best pros winning the WSOP ME, even though my estimate was much closer to the "correct" odds (as determined by Sklansky). Borodog can quite childish sometimes.

Anyway, this thread is pointless. It's a typical "Let's have a circle jerk about how stupid non-AC people are" thread.

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slick,

I don't think I ever really thought you were wrong; I just think what you were saying was not as different from what I was saying as you were making it out to be. I think a couple dozen pros being better than 1000:1 against made my point, since that's really all I claimed, although I honestly thought it would be more like 500:1.

Plus I never actually saw the double digit lines you mentioned; the ones I saw were of order 100-200:1 on the top pros. All that a 20-30:1 line means is that some sellers have higher prices and some buyers don't do their research.

Anyway, the reason I didn't really get into an argument over it was that I never thought you were "wrong", so if I came of that way, I apologize. Your estimate of the odds was better than mine.

[adanthar]

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And our current government has done such a great job of stopping genocides? It has let this one in darfur go on and on and on, it let the one in 1994 in rwanda happen, there are others, but my point is made.

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So what? Ron Paul doesn't want intervention, either - clearly, if you're asking Paulmerica to prevent genocides by force, you're barking up the wrong tree. In fact, I'm pretty sure nobody wants anything to do with using force - we've all had enough of Iraq lately.

But, oddly enough, that's not what this bill does, because this is as toothless as these types of bills get. *All* that it does is to - largely voluntarily - ensure as little money goes to Sudan as possible. Hell, it's barely even concerned with the actual genocide; it just says "these people are evil and we want nothing to do with them, so when bidding for federal contracts, please don't turn around and deal with them next". That's the same thing that the Libertopian rational consumer is expected to do for himself hundreds of times a day, isn't it?

[DVaut1]

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And our current government has done such a great job of stopping genocides? It has let this one in darfur go on and on and on, it let the one in 1994 in rwanda happen, there are others, but my point is made.

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So when the the US "lets" a genocide go on in the Sudan and in Rwanda, the American government fails -- but, when the US intervenes and "meddles" in foreign affairs with economic sanctions and/or force, we suck at it and only make things worse.

Yes, you made a point. It's entirely circular, but you made it.

[owsley]

You made a point about how you didnt think that free markets would prevent genocide, all I was saying is that our government has a really crappy record of doing anything to prevent them either. It's true and its pretty disgraceful when you consider a lot of what our government says its aims and goals are.

[DVaut1]

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You made a point about how you didnt think that free markets would prevent genocide, all I was saying is that our government has a really crappy record of doing anything to prevent them either. It's true and its pretty disgraceful when you consider a lot of what our government says its aims and goals are.

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But when the US government actually tries to do things to prevent genocides from occurring, the Ron Pauls of the world cry foul -- our interventionalist foreign policy is wasteful, inefficient, immoral, and causes more problems than it solves. Damned if you do, damned if you don't, I guess.

[slickpoppa]

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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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I frankly haven't read much of the thread; I just thought declaring victory was a bit over the top. For one, some other ACist will surely do it for you, and two, it sounds kind of trite doing it yourself. Of course you think you won the argument.

I probably should read the thread, though, since you and adanthar may be the two smartest posters on the forum.

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Borodog pulled the same crap when I got into an argument with him about the odds of the best pros winning the WSOP ME, even though my estimate was much closer to the "correct" odds (as determined by Sklansky). Borodog can quite childish sometimes.

Anyway, this thread is pointless. It's a typical "Let's have a circle jerk about how stupid non-AC people are" thread.

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slick,

I don't think I ever really thought you were wrong; I just think what you were saying was not as different from what I was saying as you were making it out to be. I think a couple dozen pros being better than 1000:1 against made my point, since that's really all I claimed, although I honestly thought it would be more like 500:1.

Plus I never actually saw the double digit lines you mentioned; the ones I saw were of order 100-200:1 on the top pros. All that a 20-30:1 line means is that some sellers have higher prices and some buyers don't do their research.

Anyway, the reason I didn't really get into an argument over it was that I never thought you were "wrong", so if I came of that way, I apologize. Your estimate of the odds was better than mine.

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Aight, we cool now B.

BTW, those 30:1 lines were from some [censored] site for the 2005 WSOP that someone posted in the MTT forum. Not surprising they didn't last long, but the fact that they were even published is pretty ridiculous.