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u/Plant33 · 1 pointr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I read the book "Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393069001?pc_redir=1405274696&robot_redir=1), and it kind of explains the fear surrounding the USSR and the spread of communism in Latin America and Asia, and why conservative figures like Reagan and Thatcher were seemingly needed. The public of the US and UK desired someone to take on the threat of communism that was sweeping the world, and the best persons to do that had to be staunch conservatives who unilaterally stood for free markets, free speech, freeing people from the strains of communism, etc.

One of the other things, like you mention, is that Reagan (and Thatcher too) was good at orating ideas to the public. He was also quite charming. I'm sure when you watched the debates you noted that joke he made about not "exploiting his opponents youth and inexperience". That alone probably won him the election. A lot of Americans I feel want to elect someone they can partially relate to, especially conservative figures, not only like Reagan, but like GWB or Nixon (his "checkers speech" forever made him seem human to voters). Reagan, I feel, was good at relating himself to the common person, whether just by being charming, or talking about his faith that many Americans shared.
And his life story of simply growing up pretty normal was probably relatable too (one of the reasons Thatcher was liked a lot was because she really came from humble origins, which I guess a lot of British folk like).

I hope that helps a little bit. Personally, I find him such an interesting character. He's probably my favorite president not because he did a lot of good, but just because he's so fascinating.

u/Jamesshrugged · -20 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Maybe you could quote what you think is relevant there?


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/BB%26T

>BB&T (Branch Banking and Trust) is one of the largest financial services holding companies in the U.S. with $222.6 billion in assets and market capitalization of $30.6 billion (as of September 30, 2016).


https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_A._Allison_IV
>In 2008, Allison was nominated by Morningstar as one of the best CEOs of 2008.

So Allison has an explicitly Objectivist world view, was the CEO of BB&T, and BB&T was extremely successful.


Allison is still extremely admired in the business world.

https://www.amazon.com/Leadership-Crisis-Free-Market-Cure/dp/0071831118#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1483292088690

>John A. Allison is President and CEO of the Cato Institute. Previously he served for twenty years as Chairman and CEO of BB&T, one of the largest financial institutions in America. Allison is a former Distinguished Professor of Practice at Wake Forest University. He received a Lifetime Achievement Award from American Banker, was named one of the decade’s top 100 most successful CEOs in the world by Harvard Business Review, and is the recipient of six honorary doctorate degrees.

>Hailed by Forbes magazine as “one of the most important books of the year,” John Allison’s breakout bestseller The Financial Crisis and the Free Market Cure

How am I wrong?

u/Mentalpopcorn · 5 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I wrote a paper analyzing Chilean politics last year. The thesis was that libertarianism, Friendmanite neoliberalism, etc., in pure form, can only exist under authoritarian or totalitarian (in the case of Ayn Rand's objectivist capitalism) regimes and are logically incompatible with democracy.

The conclusion was that if people are ever given a vote, they will by and large vote against purist constructs of these political theories, and I used Chilean politics to demonstrate the point. I presented the argument in class and the logic of it was accepted, even by the two libertarian leaning classmates, but sadly it didn't move them at all. They concluded essentially that political freedom is unnecessary for real freedom™.

EDIT: If anyone is interested in learning more about the very fascinating "libertarian" dictatorship in Chile, and how it was implemented with the help of Milton Friedman, I suggest checking out Naomi Kline's The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. She's definitely a leftist, and so it should be read with her bias in mind, but she's a fantastic writer and journalist and there's enough factual information to form your own perspectives on the matter without relying completely on her analysis.

u/Tenhats · 3 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

> no, that would mean, there are market opportunities to improve something there

How so?

> That would be feudalism or maybe some sort of pure version of utilitarianism like Mill.

What I described is what many prominent right-libertarian thinkers, for [Rothbard] (https://mises.org/library/ballots-and-bullets) to [Mises.] (https://mises.org/library/mises-fascism-democracy-and-other-questions) Pretty much the entire [austrian school of economics really.] (https://www.amazon.com/Democracy-Economics-Politics-Perspectives-Democratic/dp/0765808684) I can get you specific relevant quotes from any of the above if you need them.

I do agree with you though that a market completely free of government interference would rapidly turn into fuedalism, but that's not the baseline libertarian position.

Regarding the system you're describing, I would wager that the regulations you call for alone create a market that isn't truly free, but also where does the government obtain the funds to carry out this role? If it's through taxation then we're again drifting away from a free market and we bump into that taxation is theft bit too, if you believe in that. These not-for-profit government services as well, you're describing social services and or a public option, again, no longer a free market. Also, what's to stop especially rich companies from buying out the government and using these regulations and taxes that you're cool with for their benefit?

I mean, what you're describing is essentially just Keynesian social democracy.

> There is no social Darwinism here, govt ensures base survival and rights of people.

Social darwinism needn't be life or death, just a sorting of society through competition with the idea that the best folks would end up on top and the worst at the bottom, that the most innovative, intelligent, and productive companies will overtake the others. The wealth the CEOs of that company obtain is justified and right, and so is the poverty of those who go fail and go bankrupt. The market working as intended.

u/superxin · 3 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

GR has a lot of amazing history you can find. Anything that has happened nationally, happened nationally because it was in a lot of local areas, so even Grand Rapids has its own piece that plays a role, but with its own twist. The book I mentioned before shows why GR has historically had low union membership rates. You may be interested in a couple other books I'm getting to this year:

u/Luna1943XB · 2 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

That entire fiishing analogy and the whole Irwin 'The Tax Dodger' Schiff and Peter 'The Gold Shill' Schiff book: How and economy grows and why it crashes is aimed squarely at shallow thinkers. It appeals very well to those who would like to believe everything is just so simple.

That said I do actually like the book from a stylistic point of view, it really does present Austrian Economics spam in a interesting and easy to understand format, the style is brilliant I think.

But unfortunately dunning krugerand libertarians read it and subsequently think they are experts at socio-economic policies because herp derp everything in society is just like two men on an island fishing.

Private ownership of natural resources, discrimination, historical oppression all doesn't real and doesn't matter even if they were.

Our complex society can just easily be hyper reduced to two men fishing in the sea. (Two men who started off on equal footing btw)

As you said once you change the scenario to where one man owns the entire island and everything on it and the second man only has the option to either pay rent by working as a chattel slave or rely on mother nature and hope he can evolve into an aquatic mammal before he runs out of energy and drowns in the ocean., the fairy tale doesn't sound as great any more does it.

u/JonWood007 · 1 pointr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

>I read the book "Reagan and Thatcher: The Difficult Relationship" (http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0393069001?pc_redir=1405274696&robot_redir=1), and it kind of explains the fear surrounding the USSR and the spread of communism in Latin America and Asia, and why conservative figures like Reagan and Thatcher were seemingly needed. The public of the US and UK desired someone to take on the threat of communism that was sweeping the world, and the best persons to do that had to be staunch conservatives who unilaterally stood for free markets, free speech, freeing people from the strains of communism, etc.

Yeah but we didn't. All the leaders from 1945 to 1979 were way more liberal in a lot of ways and they also opposed communism. No need to go almost to McCarthyism to promote "capitalism"...heck...turning it into such an ideologically charged thing has been destructive to this country. Having friendly capitalism gave us the moral high ground. We no longer hold that high ground IMO because at this point we're proving Karl Marx right in a lot of ways.

> I'm sure when you watched the debates you noted that joke he made about not "exploiting his opponents youth and inexperience".

There we go again!

But yeah I agree. I really hate that idea tho...that we go for people who sound good rather than do good. Then we complain about why nothing gets done!

u/CelestialDynamics · 4 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I'm not for you creating news, then crossposting it here. It's just noise.

You got 90+ comments. A few people agreed with you. It reads like it went OK, given initial conditions. I don't know if you'd believe me, but for the most part, libertarianism isn't completely bankrupt, you just can't apply it to absolutely every part of society. I've read the Ayn Rand set, I like parts of the philosophy, but I also understand there is a place for government, regulation, taxes, and polite society.

Some guy wrote a great post about "going to die on the hill" when people bring up private roads. Libertarians want to deregulate drugs, get us out of foreign wars, and reduce regulations that monopolies use to stay monopolies.

There should be a common ground.

You going over there to deliberately post what is essentially garbage about a dictionary definition of "tyranny" isn't going to build consensus or get us any closer to political utopia. You're just making enemies.

I think in the end many of us want the same things, but starting out from the paradigm of "we are enemies, here are some shitty goalposts, let's debate", (Jesus Christ, there is a /r/AskLibertarians/) ... it's caustic.

Real people don't run on "logic, reasoning, and unambiguous verbiage". You're thinking of robots. I would recommend some books on Debate.

No amount of "being right" will make up for "being respected". If you want to win people to this position, I'd work on the mechanics of convincing others.

(I feel for you, this is a problem I'm very aware of myself, but you need honest feedback, not a circle-jerk.)

****

Edit. Deleted the posts under (nothing of value) and unsubscribed.

u/r4ndpaulsbrilloballs · 14 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Libertarians, specifically ancaps, literally started /r/EndDemocracy and wrote books like Democracy the God that Failed and articles like A Libertarian Case for Monarchy.

Whether you personally realize it or not, libertarians really do hate democracy and want to replace it with strongman dictators, or monarchs in polite terms.

u/DrGobKynes · 2 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

That's actually not anything an-cap at all, but an anarchist history of nomadic stateless peoples in Asia through the lens of groups of people avoiding the rule of southeast Asian states. It's a pretty interesting book, although I'm not sure about the author's arguments or conclusions.

It seems libertarians/an-caps have appropriated it, though.

u/RandPaulsBrilloBalls · 3 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I didn't even mention Africa. Or China. There were millions of Chinese that starved under British rule during that time. And that's not considering anywhere else the Brits occupied under Victoria. And then there was the Indian famine of 1896 with more food exported to England. And then there was the Indian famine of 1899. Maybe the millions are adding up for you now and the picture's getting clearer?

By the time Queen Victoria was done, she had operated on every continent for 40 years, longer than Stalin or Mao ever had. And there are a lot of people in the Empire back then. More than either ever ruled over. British introduction of capitalism and starvation policies under Queen Victoria probably took out well over 100 million. The way it worked was that things would happen right on the edge, very efficiently, until something went slightly wrong. Potato blight, el niño, whatever. Then, when yields shifted, prices didn't, because the English were always richer and could demand harder, so famine rolls through. Government could intervene but won't because it has to let the market work.

The Irish famine is just the most famous of a series of about 50 of these things. The other 49 just happened to far-away brown people.

Anyways, there's a lot more on it. Check out the book "Late Victorian Holocausts," for more.

u/RandsFoodStamps · 8 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I agree. This macro is unfair and is Exhibit A on why I don't like image macros to begin with.

Some libertarians exhibit certain characteristics of cult behavior (cutting yourself off from family is the most extreme I've seen), but nothing like the psychopaths at Scientology. Most local chapters of any political organization/party require some kind of dues to provide basic communication and organization. Paying $25 per year is pretty damn low. Comparing it to joining SeaOrg is ridiculous.

Read Lawrence Wright's current book and tell me the Libertarian Party is the same.

u/duplicitous · 16 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

What are you talking about? They've already read the greatest work of mankind.

u/[deleted] · -1 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

You are the second dumbest person I've ever spoken to on this website. Maybe the first if it turns out my theory is right and number 1 is a sockpuppet account.

Educate yourself: http://www.amazon.com/From-Hegel-Marx-Intellectual-Development/dp/0231096658

u/KHAN_OF_XINJIANG · 26 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

99.9% of the time, i would say you are right. in this case, these specific people are probably disparaging other white people aka "hillbillies".

Appalachia is a disoriented place (a peripheral, internal colony to the larger nation) that is very much divided against itself. in a ridge community of 30 households, there will be 15 tiny churches, few of whom care much for each other. communities on opposite sides of a ridge don't associate, often regarding each other with suspicion. people who live in the county seat consider those "out in the counties" to be backward, while those out in the counties consider those in-town to be pretentious, corrupt and politically connected. some families names are blacklisted by other family names, and they can't abide anyone with that name getting anything.

northeastern capital and their agents / strike breakers did (and still do) a hell of a number on these people. these are the geographies capitalism ravaged long before the suburban randroids and ancappers wanked themselves silly to propertarian dreams and rugged individualist mythos.

source: did community organization / anti-poverty work pretty much right around there.

if you want a very well researched book about this region--it also speaks to the Mississippi delta, which has its dispossession fall much more "neatly" along racial lines--i recommend:
World's Apart: Why Rural Poverty Persists in America

u/afraid_of_ponies · 2 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Cons are still pissed off that we are not living in The Jungle.

u/ayn_rands_trannydick · 41 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

Let's think about libertarians for a minute:

☑ Fundamental belief that only the strong should survive

☑ Weird beliefs about genetic superiority

☑ Movement that consists almost entirely of white men

☑ Advocate overthrow of democratically elected government

☑ Armed militias

☑ Prone to believing in conspiracy theories

☑ Cult adherence to philosophy

☑ Belief that truth may only be found in official party documents

☑ Dismissive of actual experts and empirical evidence

☑ Identification of racial minorities as scapegoats for societal ills

☑ Rabid protection of corporate power

☑ Disdain for intellectuals and the arts

☑ Rampant sexism

☑ Advocating the suppression of labor power

☑ Obsession with central banks laced with anti-Semitic undertones

☑ Disdain for human rights and the rights of children in particular

☑ Single-leader rule preferable to democratic rule (see Hoppe)

☑ Rabid defense of reactionary and racist thought.

☑ Unwillingness to compromise

☑ Inexplicable obsession with firearms and military-style uniforms

☑ Broad connections with other right-wing and reactionary sects

☑ Appropriation of nationalist language and symbology

☑ Persecution narrative among the privileged

Placing money and power ahead of human beings

Let's face it. There is a lot in common here. It's all uniquely Anglo-America-flavored. And they'll deny it up and down. But there are too many signs to ignore it completely.


u/TheReadMenace · 15 pointsr/EnoughLibertarianSpam

I find the methods for tallying body counts that can be blamed on leftists to be rather lacking. The millions of people that starved to death or died from preventable illness in capitalist countries aren't counted, while those that die from famines in communist countries are meticulously tallied. The policies of the capitalists are just as much to blame as the polices of the communists, yet only the commies are ever held responsible. When someone dies under capitalism it's "an act of god", while any death under the commies must be caused by their nefarious nature.

Why limit it to the 20th century? The commies weren't even around until then, so why not look at how the capitalists managed the world before them? In British India alone, there were an estimated 50 million deaths due to famine. That's just one in a long line of tragedies. Of course, that's never counted. Very little effort is put into counting the mountains of dead due to capitalist imperialism.