5 ms·

It seems the post has wounded your ego, and I guess that's fair enough given it makes such sweeping generalisations (and "pop-psychoanalysis", as it were.) How

by angusgr 16y ago

It seems the post has wounded your ego, and I guess that's fair enough given it makes such sweeping generalisations (and "pop-psychoanalysis", as it were.) However, I'd be really interested to hear your comments on some of the other points he makes, or the other threads of his argument (particularly, comparisons to history.) (FWIW, I didn't submit the article because I whole-heartedly agree with it, I just thought it was quite well-written and interesting, and I thought it might generate some enlightening responses.)

jacoblyles 16y ago
It hasn't wounded my ego, rather I find the article insulting. It caricatures people of my political beliefs as having nasty motivations and abundant personal failings. It reads like an op-ed in a high school Marxist newsletter and is about as balanced. I am fine with reading political articles on Hacker News but I would hope they have a little more respect for their audience. Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far. In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed. And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.
- jbooth 16y ago
  Well, in the current political climate? Libertarians are a self-caricature. Not you personally, and sorry, but Carl Paladino's got signs up all over New York state that say "I'm mad too, Carl!". That's literally the guy's slogan, major party candidate for Governor of a large and important state, and his platform is a bunch of incoherent nonsense. And 99% of self-described libertarians are lining up behind these wackos all over the country. Sorry that the crazies are ruining your rep.. but if you don't want it to happen, don't enable the crazies.
  - jacoblyles 16y ago
    Why should I take credit for people I don't agree with? Do you think it fair if I lump you together with people you don't like because they are in roughly the same part of the political spectrum as yourself? Politics makes people rude and irrational.
    - jbooth 16y ago
      If you don't agree with them (and I'm using the royal "you" here), then why are libertarians lining up across the country to support these loonies? Maybe you're ok, but libertarians in general? Part and parcel of the tea party this year.
      - jacoblyles 16y ago
        To the extent that the libertarian voting bloc goes Republican this year, it will probably have something to do with the $1.4 trillion deficit. During the Bush years, people that have roughly libertarian values went Democrat (you can look up old Cato articles for details) so it is not as if they are beholden to any one party. Unfortunately our system forces people to choose between the lesser of two evils and right now many people are blanching at the deficit.
jerf 16y ago
There's two ways to view somebody's political views; one can look at the direction they wish to take a given system, and one can look at the destination they wish to end up at. We tend to classify people by their direction, "right" or "left" or "liberal" or "conservative", but it is a grave error to mistake the direction for the destination. I drive south to get to work but it is not in fact my intention to get to the South Pole every time I do so; I arrive at my destination and stop, and in fact if I pass it, I will turn around to get there. (It would be absurd in ideological terms to then call me a hypocrite for going from being a Southist to a Northist.) And it's hard to get past that fundamental error to have some sort of "discussion". I am a libertarian right now, but the caricature in the post is so absurd I can't even take offense. Because I think an entity so utterly absurdly monstrous that its yearly budgetary overruns are measured in the trillions of dollars a year and it's unfunded liabilities measure in the hundreds of trillions should be cut down to size before it takes the entire world over a cliff, I want to see child labor laws repealed? It doesn't even make sense. There's not much to "counter". In fact I actually consider myself a "Classical Liberal", which today makes you a "conservative" in terms of direction, but my destination isn't "anarchy". Just something much smaller, much more focused, much less resource intensive, and much less likely to crash the economy because there's every incentive to spend and no incentive to stop. (Which I actually consider the fundamental failure of liberalism, it in fact has become a direction and not a destination in practice. If you can identify some principle being used to decide when we have spent enough money on something, I'm all ears. And I mean a principle in use by the government, not some hypothetical principle that could be used by somebody, sometime.) If that's so unreasonable, well, I hope you enjoy the blasted remnants of the economy that results. Part of the reason I want to see our government cut down to size is that when we crash the system, we will lose welfare and child labor laws and potentially civil order itself. I understand the impulse to circle the wagons and defend the government, but the simple fiscal reality is that if you really do like the results of a strong government capable of protecting its citizens, you really need to help me refocus it on those tasks or you'll be left with a government that can do nothing. Can you seriously imagine child labor laws being repealed in the US? I mean, seriously? This isn't even remotely a threat; economic collapse on the other hand at this point due to an overextended government is more like "can we avoid it or is it too late already?" Probability of a repeal of child labor laws is virtually zero; probability of a government without any ability to pay anyone to enforce them, rather greater than zero even if I am not yet panicking.

by angusgr 16y ago

jacoblyles 16y ago

It hasn't wounded my ego, rather I find the article insulting. It caricatures people of my political beliefs as having nasty motivations and abundant personal failings. It reads like an op-ed in a high school Marxist newsletter and is about as balanced. I am fine with reading political articles on Hacker News but I would hope they have a little more respect for their audience. Any Capitalist would make the rejoinder that society sucked so much in the Victorian era because society was so much poorer in aggregate. You could tax the rich at 90% and it wouldn't have stretched very far. In the long run, the wages of labor are determined by labor productivity. Laws, unions, regulations, and other beloved institutions of the left can tinker with that ever so slightly at the margin but not by much. It is only through the accumulation of capital goods and the advancement of technology that a middle class arose. You can legislate all you want before that happens and you aren't going to do a ton of good. You can declare free unicorns for everyone but if you ain't got no unicorns then you'll leave people disappointed. And after a capital stock is accumulated, labor becomes more productive, wages increase and life gets better of course ideologues of all stripes will claim credit for it.

jbooth 16y ago
Well, in the current political climate? Libertarians are a self-caricature. Not you personally, and sorry, but Carl Paladino's got signs up all over New York state that say "I'm mad too, Carl!". That's literally the guy's slogan, major party candidate for Governor of a large and important state, and his platform is a bunch of incoherent nonsense. And 99% of self-described libertarians are lining up behind these wackos all over the country. Sorry that the crazies are ruining your rep.. but if you don't want it to happen, don't enable the crazies.
- jacoblyles 16y ago
  Why should I take credit for people I don't agree with? Do you think it fair if I lump you together with people you don't like because they are in roughly the same part of the political spectrum as yourself? Politics makes people rude and irrational.
  - jbooth 16y ago
    If you don't agree with them (and I'm using the royal "you" here), then why are libertarians lining up across the country to support these loonies? Maybe you're ok, but libertarians in general? Part and parcel of the tea party this year.
    - jacoblyles 16y ago
      To the extent that the libertarian voting bloc goes Republican this year, it will probably have something to do with the $1.4 trillion deficit. During the Bush years, people that have roughly libertarian values went Democrat (you can look up old Cato articles for details) so it is not as if they are beholden to any one party. Unfortunately our system forces people to choose between the lesser of two evils and right now many people are blanching at the deficit.

jerf 16y ago

There's two ways to view somebody's political views; one can look at the direction they wish to take a given system, and one can look at the destination they wish to end up at. We tend to classify people by their direction, "right" or "left" or "liberal" or "conservative", but it is a grave error to mistake the direction for the destination. I drive south to get to work but it is not in fact my intention to get to the South Pole every time I do so; I arrive at my destination and stop, and in fact if I pass it, I will turn around to get there. (It would be absurd in ideological terms to then call me a hypocrite for going from being a Southist to a Northist.) And it's hard to get past that fundamental error to have some sort of "discussion". I am a libertarian right now, but the caricature in the post is so absurd I can't even take offense. Because I think an entity so utterly absurdly monstrous that its yearly budgetary overruns are measured in the trillions of dollars a year and it's unfunded liabilities measure in the hundreds of trillions should be cut down to size before it takes the entire world over a cliff, I want to see child labor laws repealed? It doesn't even make sense. There's not much to "counter". In fact I actually consider myself a "Classical Liberal", which today makes you a "conservative" in terms of direction, but my destination isn't "anarchy". Just something much smaller, much more focused, much less resource intensive, and much less likely to crash the economy because there's every incentive to spend and no incentive to stop. (Which I actually consider the fundamental failure of liberalism, it in fact has become a direction and not a destination in practice. If you can identify some principle being used to decide when we have spent enough money on something, I'm all ears. And I mean a principle in use by the government, not some hypothetical principle that could be used by somebody, sometime.) If that's so unreasonable, well, I hope you enjoy the blasted remnants of the economy that results. Part of the reason I want to see our government cut down to size is that when we crash the system, we will lose welfare and child labor laws and potentially civil order itself. I understand the impulse to circle the wagons and defend the government, but the simple fiscal reality is that if you really do like the results of a strong government capable of protecting its citizens, you really need to help me refocus it on those tasks or you'll be left with a government that can do nothing. Can you seriously imagine child labor laws being repealed in the US? I mean, seriously? This isn't even remotely a threat; economic collapse on the other hand at this point due to an overextended government is more like "can we avoid it or is it too late already?" Probability of a repeal of child labor laws is virtually zero; probability of a government without any ability to pay anyone to enforce them, rather greater than zero even if I am not yet panicking.