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My (failed) attempt to reach out to progressives.
My recent foray into the thomhartmann.com message board has lead me to conclude that progressives are hopeless. A few months ago, I registered for thomhartmann.com in the hopes of bring progressives over to the libertarian dark side. As an aside, I don't care much for Thom Hartmann. He interviewed FTL's Ian during the Ron Paul campaign. Instead of asking him questions about the campaign and why Ian was supporting Paul, he deviated into a discussion of anarchism. I thought it was very dishonest. He also did a similar thing with Andrew Napolitano.
Anyway, back to my experiences on the progressive message board. I though I would be able to find common ground with progs. on the issues of war, civil liberties, separation of church and state as well as any other issues that are erroneously associated with the "Left". Using those commonalites (sp?), I figured that I could educate them on free market economics. Wow!, was I wrong. In general, most of them associate free market economics with the conservative/Republican establishment. Any mention of the free market and I was immediated put into the "far right", "right-wing", "corporatist" and even fascist camp. Fakes like Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck et al. have so poisoned the well that many on the left think that the free market is just a cover for fascism. I met the newbie, stevo_dubc over there. Hopefully, he can vouch for me when I say that I stuck to issues, asked clear concise questions, and refrained from ad homimen. The majority of board members either would not answer questions directly and/or would question motives.
To top things off, these people were not so good on the issues like war and civil liberties. Socialism/fascism in domestic policy is their overriding concern.
__________________
Liberty lies in the hearts of men and women; when it dies there, no constitution, no law, no court can save it
Learned Hand
In the past men created witches: now they create mental patients.
Thomas Szasz
Relinquish liberty for the purposes of defense in an emergency?
Why? It would seem that in an emergency, of all times, one needs
his greatest strength. So if liberty is strength and slavery is weakness,
liberty is a necessity rather than a luxury, and we can ill afford
to be without it—least of all during an emergency.
F.A. Harper
Ah yes, godknows. I've seen you around there. I remember you called me on the carpet at one point when I agreed with poly/kerry/drc about the amount of derivitives out there. I felt like a dope, but you were right. Don't agree with poly/kerry/drc just because they spout off their crap in officous tones!
Loganthor was before my time, but I've heard the name.
Ah yes, godknows. I've seen you around there. I remember you called me on the carpet at one point when I agreed with poly/kerry/drc about the amount of derivitives out there. I felt like a dope, but you were right. Don't agree with poly/kerry/drc just because they spout off their crap in officous tones!
Loganthor was before my time, but I've heard the name.
That was his original name. Reluctant to say his real name as understandable.
Sinced that time, as noted, he has had many other names but it is not hard to know who he is.
Anyway, I am certainly an equal opportunity basher. I just find drc, Kerry, Poly as worthless of my time at all. If all they con contribute is dribble, then I just ignore them. I told Kerry last time that I would not read a pargraph greater than a screen full.
I have enjoyed bugging Ren for a long time. He is at least a little more coherant but still is a hypocrit. I say that in the sense that he will look at the most microscopic aspects of a Republican and will defend every action by a Dem. For example his obsession with Palin but fails to analyze any Lib under that same microscopic examination. Some pedantic nihilists spend inordinate time to show a difference between their heros and other ideologies. For example Naomi Klein talks about "Shock Capitalism" but never once notices Shock Socialism...
Ron Rutherford
Another bugaboo of "progressives" is monopoly. I tried to point out to them, as X pointed out, that monopolies only exist with the help of government. And that their history of the Progressive Era is not what they think.
Here's Rothbard from "The Origin of the Fed",
Fortunately for the cartelists, a solution to this vexing problem lay at hand.
Monopoly could be put over in the name of opposition to monopoly! In that way,
using the rhetoric beloved by Americans, the form of the political economy could
be maintained, while the content could be totally reversed. Monopoly had always
been defined, in the popular parlance and among economists, as "grants of
exclusive privilege" by the government. It was now simply redefined as "big
business" or business competitive practices, such as price-cutting, so that regulatory
commissions, from the Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC) to the Federal
Trade Commission (FTC) to state insurance commissions were lobbied for and
staffed with big-business men from the regulated industry, all done in the name of
curbing "big-business monopoly" on the free market. In that way, the regulatory
commissions could subsidize, restrict, and cartelize in the name of "opposing
monopoly," as well as promoting the general welfare and national security. Once
again, it was railroad monopoly that paved the way.
http://mises.org/journals/qjae/pdf/qjae2_3_1.pdf
On top of this, I pointed out that government itself was a monopoly. And if progressives were to be consistent in their opposition to monopoly, then they should oppose monopoly government and be anarchists. Nobody really responded.
This is a short thread and easy to understand: http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=8&t=3249&p=41332
entitled Hugo Chavez: US Caused Haiti Earthquake
And Poly's response to the thread:
Venezuela wasn't self-sufficient in food production way before Chavez was voted into the Presidency.
Developing the country requires more electriciy than it was previously producing. A third world country didn't need much. The few McMansions didn't use all that much...and the majority of the population used hardly any.
I just wonder why anyone would discuss issues with someone as stupid as this. How did electricity production suddenly get into a thread about Hugo's conspiracies about the US abilities. It also seems that if the US had these vast destructive instruments Hugo thinks it will be reasonable to get nukes in response.
Anyway, he assumes that Hugo is actually developing the country and clearly price controls will not accomplish this goal as I am sure all here understand.
Ron
A few podcasts ago, Gard mentioned that he was going to be talking about corporations and limited liability. One of the first realizations I had when visiting Thom-land is that they view corporations as tyrannical entities that can only be controlled by government. Whereas I see a reduction in government control as something that would enhance my liberty, they see the same reduction as something that would enable corporations to increase their tyrannical control of us all. They have a line that goes something like, If you're against big government then you must be for big corporations.
Anyway, after several incidental discussions of corporations, I decided to start a forum thread over there ( http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3323 )asking what progressives think should be done about corporations.
I got several replies, but I feel as if this one ( http://www.thomhartmann.com/board/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=3323&start=10#p421... ) perfectly typifies their ideology. It's hard to even begin framing a counter argument to such fantasies. I can't resist quoting this response. Notice at the end that he assures me that his position is not ideological. Also notice the affectation of capitalizing the word "commerce."
(Note - I tried to set this off in blockquotes, but in preview mode it didn't work. So I'm offsetting it with a horizontal rule...)
Ok, the big issue about corporations is that they engage in Commerce and make money as their mission. None of the other collections of individuals does this. Unions organize for interests that can only be realized when they match the institutional heft of the business that employs them. If individual voluntary negotiations could effect the same result, they would not need to organize. But anyone who is in favor of labor getting paid a living wage instead of the crumbs that fall off the owner's banquet knows that "solidarity" is how we have to oppose big institutional tyranny. And those who organize to protect the environment or to promote human rights in the world are not making money. Their voluntary contributions are not tied to mortgages or debts as are those who serve the monied interests in their jobs. As has been pointed out, only the commercial entities have the gazillions to throw around, so even if unions and advocacy groups could 'enjoy' the same freedoms, they would never be able to have the cash to compete. And remember, for the commercial entities, this is all tax deductible.
I have posted elsewhere but will reprise the point that "artificial personhood" is a heuristic device or artifice of the law and not anything real. For the purpose of dealing with contract and property owned by the corporation, the law needs to imagine the relationship as persons. There is no basis in this metaphysics or the laws themselves to extend the artifice to ontology or the actual beingness of a corporation as a person or citizen. This is part of the ideology of Libertarian Economics embraced by the Opus Dei boys because it screws democracy to the wall. They believe in top down authority and institutions. They hate the idea of populism and bottom-up politics. This is why they believe this Federalist bs.
Finally, since the corporation is a creation of the state, the state must control it when it becomes "too big to live." The reason it is too big is that it becomes dominant of everything. It is not only the State that has become the bitch of Commerce. The Media, the arts, food, transportation, communication, clothing, medicine, you name what has not become shriven in the image of money. Putting money and commerce first has stripped the quality and the soul out of America and left us with material emptiness. Worse, things are not to be desired for what they are or how we like to use them. They have become totems of who we are and how well we are doing. Not fun when a scratch on your car hits your ego.
But the basic point is that the State is the instrument we use to insure that those who engage in Commerce act with integrity and do no harm. Internalizing profits while externalizing costs is sociopathic. Inflicting us with ghettos of low paid or unemployed to serve their depressed labor market structural injustice is as well. The State has to be the referee and give the law of contracts, etc. any integrity. You need a government big enough to stand up to Commerce and that means able to use its own revenues to do its work. So you get taxes instead of bribes out of the corporations and they stay the hell out of elections. period. Like they do where they don't have this problem with elections or public policy.
Sawdust did explain his analogy and his point was that he thinks we have a prejudice against corporations and just want to kill them all. He may have misread my strong position on getting them out of the Commons, and beyond there in the realm of private business I only require that they behave themselves and do no harm. Like other mixed economy advocates, I see the arena of private business to be of public concern, but not of public ownership like the Commons. In the Commons, I just want the citizens to own the systems instead of renting them because the deal is always better. It is always better because these are not occasional areas of investment or cost. They are on-going and comprise a natural monopoly for the citizenry. It is why public power can always be cheaper than private and why Medicare administration is a fraction of what the privateers extort.
This is why I do not see my approach as "ideological." It is functional and about which approach works best and serves the public at lowest cost and highest return. Predatory capitalism, the unregulated kind, gives us a far more oppressive, authoritarian and expensive product or service every time. And the quality sucks universally. The reason is clear. The business plan of the predator is to extract as much value for as little given as possible. One does not see the "private sector" dedicating itself to providing the best public service product and the best price anywhere because that is not how to profit. The purported competitive function of the market might work at the small business level, but when marketing is controlled, consumer choice is neutralized. At the very least, the expertise of marketing and shelf placement (and the bribes for it) put the consumer at a serious disadvantage. Trusting the market or any economic device of the imagination to sort out the issues of human life and society is clearly foolish. But so are most of the religious traps that lead us to get life backward and lead us astray.
drc
This is what we're up against. How does one even begin to address this, and, more importantly, should one even bother?
I'm tempted to say, "don't bother". But a part of me thinks that changing the mind of a hard core socialist or fascist is a big deal I think the whole "corporations shouldn't be persons" argument is much ado about nothing. Nobody on our side claims that corporations are literally persons. But they are created by persons. If the progressives want to take personhood away from corporations, where will that leave us? Will that mean that that the government won't need search warrants in order to search the offices of a corporation?
I think there is also confusion about what "limited liability" is. A lot of progressives seem to think that libertarians would not subject corporations to criminal law. But that's not what limited liability is about.
I tried to point out to people on the thomhartmann.com bbs that I oppose corporations getting any kind of help from the government. That help can take the form of subsidies, patents, or a cartel producing regulatory structure. But it falls on deaf ears. Even after clearly stating this, they still accuse me of being for big corporations. Now that I'm at the end of my post, I've changed my mind. Don't bother!!!! Spend your time working on apolitcal types who are independent thinkers. Most of the so-called progressives I've debated are either intellectually dishonest or just plain dishonest. I'll say that I support A and they denounce me for supporting B. They live in a two dimensional political world. If you don't agree with them, then you are a conservative or right-winger.
So, What is your solution to the abuses that corporations pepitrate? Let's first understand that a corporation is not a real thing. It is legal contruct of the state for matters of property rights ect. It has no rights, only those that the state gives it. Once it has so much mass (like our modern multi-national corps) it is in many ways it's own state. To think that it has a "right" to activley petition as if it is a natural (out of a womb) person is false. It has very real dangers to democracy. I still have not quite figured out how an anarchist state would work without becoming like Somalia. On another note, I listened to the Podcast from 2-3-2010. Gard read a long article about "natural law", corporations, and their affect on the free market. I agree almost totally with that author. I do think that corporations as they are organized and used in our times are decidedly anti-free market. I generally call that free venture to differentiate it from the current use of "free market" which is any thing but a free market more of an elite croney capitalism. So, I suppose to add to my other posts, corporations are corrosive to democracy when they are allowed to partake in political discourse and they are decidedly anti-free venture.
Update.
I've concluded that Progressives are unreachable. Not all, but most. There may be a few that are reachable but trying to separate the gold from the dross (Jefferson's phrase) is counterproductive. The straw that broke the camel's back was Walter Block's interview on the Thom Hartmann show. In the brief time he was allowed, Dr. Block defended the right of a property owner to discriminate. Hartmann's counter was that since no property is truly private or no used in commerce, the government can pass anti-discrimination laws. Of course, he used the Commerce Clause to buttress his argument. This should be a lesson to my fellow libertarians not to use the Constitution as a substitute to libertarian principles. Using the Constitution in your argument does have it's time and place as Gard has masterfully shown.
Hey Lysander - Long time no see. Do you have a link the the interview? I always love listening to Walter Block.
Speaking of Hartmann, there's been a pretty good libertarian over in the Hartmann forum. Reminds me of you - calm, logical, good knowledge of libertarian thought and Austrian economics. Goes by the nick of Austro-Libertarian, and he's had some great interactions with the usual characters - poly, kerry, drc.
As we've talked about before, those guys are not at all receptive. I think that we're better off trying to get our message across to those who are on the fence. I have a good friend at work who is slowling coming around to the ideas of liberty. That's how we're going to be sucessful - one person at a time.
(I must admit, however, that I've been pretty active over at Hartmann (under the nick of rbs). Not to change minds; just to be a thorn in their side.)
Hey Lysander - Long time no see. Do you have a link the the interview? I always love listening to Walter Block.
Speaking of Hartmann, there's been a pretty good libertarian over in the Hartmann forum. Reminds me of you - calm, logical, good knowledge of libertarian thought and Austrian economics. Goes by the nick of Austro-Libertarian, and he's had some great interactions with the usual characters - poly, kerry, drc.
As we've talked about before, those guys are not at all receptive. I think that we're better off trying to get our message across to those who are on the fence. I have a good friend at work who is slowling coming around to the ideas of liberty. That's how we're going to be sucessful - one person at a time.
(I must admit, however, that I've been pretty active over at Hartmann (under the nick of rbs). Not to change minds; just to be a thorn in their side.)
It's funny but as I read your post I was thinking of telling you that there is another good libertarian over there called "rbs". Little did I know that it was you. I even logged in over there yesterday and tried to sent rbs(you) a PM but that feature seems to have been disabled. I don't have a link for the interview. It was during the third hour. Mr. "lets all help each other" Hartmann may have discontinued his free podcast.
There is another poster over there called "Dusty". He took the regressives to task on the Rand Paul issue.
I agree with you, and have personally believed for the past 10 or so years, that people are generally going to be won over slowly and one at a time.
I used to think that Hartmann was an intelligent but misguided guy. Now I think that he is not only not that smart, but he is already dishonest.
And polycarp is still at it. He refuses to see a difference between a monastery (voluntary) and a coercive and powerful central gov't.
Maybe I'll go over there under a different nickname. But I doubt it considering I promised myself and them that I was done. If I do, I'll give to a hint so that you know its me.
It's funny but as I read your post I was thinking of telling you that there is another good libertarian over there called "rbs". Little did I know that it was you. I even logged in over there yesterday and tried to sent rbs(you) a PM but that feature seems to have been disabled.
I''m glad that I (as rbs) was able to advocate for freedom well enough to be noticed. They really don't get it. I'm guessing that you're talking about this thread or possibly this one. I really don't know whether they simply don't get the concept of freedom, or they're being disingenuous. I know that I must be bugging them, because they've started to criticize me, rather than my arguments.
Regarding PM'ing, their new software absolutely sucks. Features such as PM'ing, viewing a user's posts, viewing threads in which you participate - all gone. It really makes it hard to keep up with things.
I'll watch out for you over there. Every time I feel like giving up because I feel like I'm banging my head against the wall, I get inspired just to stick it to them.
I urge any other conspirators here to head over there just to throw sand in their gears. These folks are smiley-face fascists, and they need to understand that there are people out there who are planning on standing up to them.
PS Lysander - check for a friend request over in www.ronpaulforums.com.
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I had a very interesting conversation with my friend Lawrie who is a member of the Green Party & a hardened leftist.
He first said bailouts were equivalent to a drug addict thinking they can quit after the next snort.
He then said that a fiat currency allows an economy to be built on nothing but debt & that he was sold on the idea of the gold standard in curing this.
He then described the likes of Paul Krugman as fucking idiot for suggesting people should go shopping to get out of recession.
Ziggy,
It seems like there are two kinds of Progressives/Greens. Those who are as open-minded as they think they are and those who aren't.
By the way, I read your "Free Keene Cult" post. Would you be willing to start a new thread at the Lib. Consp. so that we might discuss it.
It seems like there are two kinds of Progressives/Greens. Those who are as open-minded as they think they are and those who aren't.
Another thing he said to me a while back that might surprise some is that he reckoned the Feds got it wrong over Waco.
He said to me on the incident that "They should of been left alone"
By the way, I read your "Free Keene Cult" post. Would you be willing to start a new thread at the Lib. Consp. so that we might discuss it.
if you want to discuss start a thread you need not seek permission from me
However I've got nothing further to add on the matter