5 ms·

Just like North Korea. It's a perfect, magical place. Confiscatory taxes and monetary policy ensures near perfect equality. Full employment. Free government hea

Just like North Korea. It's a perfect, magical place. Confiscatory taxes and monetary policy ensures near perfect equality. Full employment. Free government health care. All state run media, no Murdochs or FOX News. All businesses run by the state, no exploitation. The lowest domestic carbon emissions in the industrialised world. A vibrant cultural scene that is free of corrupting American imperialistic influences. And yet leftists don't move there. It's baffling. Every single U.S. big government liberal talks a great game, but not one of them is willing to put their money where their mouth is.

mikeash 13y ago
That is actually a great argument to use on anyone who espouses the virtues of a totalitarian, all-controlling state. The difference is that you can actually find people with some frequency who espouse the virtues of extremely small or entirely absent government, while it's pretty hard to find someone who espouses the virtues of a totalitarian, all-controlling state.
- ScottBurson 13y ago
  So you'd think. A former lover of mine once told me she was sad that the Soviet Union had collapsed. Blew my mind.
  - Evgeny 13y ago
    Quite a few people were net worse off after Soviet Union collapsed. I.e. if you had a secure job in some obscure government funded research institute, guaranteed income, free medical care and education for your kids, but now it's free market and no one is interested, so the institute is closed. Sure, there is now abundant food in the shop and you're free to travel abroad, but you have no money and at 40+ years old it's hard to start a new career. Or maybe you are retired, etc.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      Presumably the GPs lover was a young, western woman, and only inconvenienced by the collapse of the Soviet Union in an ideological manner.
      - ScottBurson 13y ago
        Yes, exactly.
- mseebach 13y ago
  You're correct, of course. The problem is that libertarians doesn't agree that "extremely small or entirely absent government" leads to Somalia and suggesting that they move there is thus the purest of straw men. I just attempted to return the favour.
  - mikeash 13y ago
    Well then the onus is on them to show why Somalia is not a good example, I'd say. Somalia had no government for a decade or two. Since there aren't really different ways to organize "no government" (what with there being no entity to organize anything) then surely there's no room for any differences.
    - mseebach 13y ago
      > Well then the onus is on them to show why Somalia is not a good example I don't see how that follows. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You got out of North Korea by hand-waving that nobody explicitly wants a "totalitarian, all-controlling state" - yet the libertarian argument is that the constant push to have the government control more and more parts of society constitutes clear, if inadvertent, steps towards exactly that. Also, the point raised isn't about whether Somalia/North Korea is a libertarian/statist paradise, it's why libertarians/statist don't move there. The answer is in almost all cases, "because I don't want to". That said, Somalia being unpleasant has a lot more to do with it being extremely poor and ravaged by civil war than is has to do with a lack of government. But in the stateless period, a good number of things improved significantly, despite the lack of government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia_(1991%E2%80%932006) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia_(1991%E2%80%...
      - mikeash 13y ago
        Well, that's a different kind of person altogether. We're talking about people who think the ideal state is one with no government at all (as evidenced by the fact that the guy claimed to be cool with moving to Somalia as long as he was armed). The people who merely think that government expansion beyond the current size might be bad are totally different and considerably more sane.

mikeash 13y ago

That is actually a great argument to use on anyone who espouses the virtues of a totalitarian, all-controlling state. The difference is that you can actually find people with some frequency who espouse the virtues of extremely small or entirely absent government, while it's pretty hard to find someone who espouses the virtues of a totalitarian, all-controlling state.

ScottBurson 13y ago
So you'd think. A former lover of mine once told me she was sad that the Soviet Union had collapsed. Blew my mind.
- Evgeny 13y ago
  Quite a few people were net worse off after Soviet Union collapsed. I.e. if you had a secure job in some obscure government funded research institute, guaranteed income, free medical care and education for your kids, but now it's free market and no one is interested, so the institute is closed. Sure, there is now abundant food in the shop and you're free to travel abroad, but you have no money and at 40+ years old it's hard to start a new career. Or maybe you are retired, etc.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    Presumably the GPs lover was a young, western woman, and only inconvenienced by the collapse of the Soviet Union in an ideological manner.
    - ScottBurson 13y ago
      Yes, exactly.
mseebach 13y ago
You're correct, of course. The problem is that libertarians doesn't agree that "extremely small or entirely absent government" leads to Somalia and suggesting that they move there is thus the purest of straw men. I just attempted to return the favour.
- mikeash 13y ago
  Well then the onus is on them to show why Somalia is not a good example, I'd say. Somalia had no government for a decade or two. Since there aren't really different ways to organize "no government" (what with there being no entity to organize anything) then surely there's no room for any differences.
  - mseebach 13y ago
    > Well then the onus is on them to show why Somalia is not a good example I don't see how that follows. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. You got out of North Korea by hand-waving that nobody explicitly wants a "totalitarian, all-controlling state" - yet the libertarian argument is that the constant push to have the government control more and more parts of society constitutes clear, if inadvertent, steps towards exactly that. Also, the point raised isn't about whether Somalia/North Korea is a libertarian/statist paradise, it's why libertarians/statist don't move there. The answer is in almost all cases, "because I don't want to". That said, Somalia being unpleasant has a lot more to do with it being extremely poor and ravaged by civil war than is has to do with a lack of government. But in the stateless period, a good number of things improved significantly, despite the lack of government: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia_(1991%E2%80%932006) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia_(1991%E2%80%...
    - mikeash 13y ago
      Well, that's a different kind of person altogether. We're talking about people who think the ideal state is one with no government at all (as evidenced by the fact that the guy claimed to be cool with moving to Somalia as long as he was armed). The people who merely think that government expansion beyond the current size might be bad are totally different and considerably more sane.