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> Karunanidhi promised free televisions for all. He won, and a freebie arms race commenced. Since Jayalalithaa resumed office in 2011, she has given away or hea

> Karunanidhi promised free televisions for all. He won, and a freebie arms race commenced. Since Jayalalithaa resumed office in 2011, she has given away or heavily subsidized laptops, saris, fans, rice, cows, goats, food processors and bicycles, and branded all of it with her face and the name Amma I know this is going to be downvoted to hell and back, but that's OK, somebody has to say these things so you kids learn to think for yourselves rather than be captive to the indoctrination you were subjected to in school. That, the quote above, is the left wing's preferred approach to amassing votes everywhere in the world. From Argentina through the US and on to India. Give shit away to buy votes. In places like Argentina and India it migt have taken the form of blenders and bikes. In places like the US it feels a bit more sophisticated but it is the same thing: pander to unions and minorities. And, just like in India and Argentina, the masses respond with votes. Once in office the politicians drop their "little people" supporters on their heads and proceed to enrich themselves. The right wing has it's own set of issues, including seeing everything through the eyes of religious fanaticism of varying degrees. Which easily buys the votes of the religious masses. Politics is such a mess. It is probably one of the lowest forms of the human condition. It causes those in the game to have to devolve into despicable beings for the all-mighty vote. Sick. Think Libertarian. Wake Up!

CoffeeDregs 11y ago
Nancy Kress wrote Beggars in Spain to explore nearly this exact topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain In the book, the upperclass controls all capital and productivity and, literally and directly, buys the votes necessary to stay in office. That, the quote above, is the left wing's preferred approach to amassing votes everywhere in the world. I happen to agree with much of what you say, but it's not just the left wing. See Medicare Part D (http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/medicare-part-b-tea-party-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/medicare-part-b-tea-party-o...)...
- rebootthesystem 11y ago
  Well, buying votes is the nature of politics. I happen to think that the left is far more despicable than the right because they claim to be for the little guys and the poor, use and abuse them for votes and then toss them aside until the next election. What's incomprehensible is that the masses keep getting duped and and the come back with more votes. And, BTW, I am not only pointing the finger at the US political system. This is true almost everywhere. The particularly nasty examples are in most of Latin America, where the ruling parties (all leftists, socialists) play the masses like finely tuned violins, keep getting voted into office and all the get in return is more misery. Every single politician walks away rich, entitled, protected from legal repercussions. Talk about the 1 percent. Despicable.
selimthegrim 11y ago
I actually got confused today because someone posted a picture of the religious leader nicknamed Amma and and I was like wait who, doesn't she have breakfast cereal named after her?
- asdfzxc 11y ago
  Different Amma.
sigzero 11y ago
"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS VOTE FOR THOSE WHO PROMISE THE MOST BENEFITS from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."
- thrownaway2424 11y ago
  Do you normally quote The Daily Oklahoman, or only on special occasions?
Frondo 11y ago
The right gives things away too--they just give things away to corporations and to the wealthy. Libertarians are right alongside that--it's a huge gift of power to the corporations. The individual would get squeezed hard in a libertarian world.
- ancap 11y ago
  It's a myth that the "left" does not do this as well. "Obamacare", food stamps and many other welfare programs are indirect corporate welfare. The military industrial complex, perhaps the most egregious example of corporate welfare is whole heartedly supported by both sides. Further evidence is how the same big banks donate huge amounts of money to candidates from both parties.
- rwallace 11y ago
  Speaking as someone who self-identifies as a pragmatic libertarian, if I were in charge, the way I would try to help the 99% would start with getting rid of a lot of ways the law supports rent-seeking behaviour by corporations and the wealthy in the form of things like enforced noncompete agreements, zoning laws, licensing and bureaucracy that hurt small businesses more than big ones and reduce competition among employers, credentialism et cetera.
badsock 11y ago
I make enough money that any swing to the left generally costs me more than I gain from it. I don't vote that way because of narrow self-interest, I do it because I want a better society to live in, and the majority of the hard data I've seen says that a redistributive system results in a better society.
- oldmanjay 11y ago
  The USSR notwithstanding. Or whatever it is China does.
  - briandear 11y ago
    Redistribution results in one thing: equal levels of misery. Re: Cuba, Venenzuela, pre-Deng Xiaoping China, the Warsaw Pact countries, Vietnam. Standards of living are higher in capitalist countries, that's a fact. Aside from the insane, nobody in 1987 said, "Citizenship in the USSR would be so much I nicer than here in the U.S." Also interesting: the lines around US consulates to get immigrant visas-- they often extend around the block. Every single day. The line outside the Cuban embassy? None. If a redistributive economy is best, why aren't Latin Americans sneaking into Cuba instead of into the United States? Why aren't the Hondurans making the trip to Venenzuela instead of risking the danger of crossing through Mexico to get to the United States? I would offer that the poorest people in the world all want to go to the U.S. Not because of redistributive policies, but because of opportunity. You can't become rich in Cuba. You can't even start a business of any consequence there. You can't get capital loans. what's the incentive to innovate and work hard if the government is just going to steal your efforts. The government should have a regressive tax;bathe current tax system actually penalizes success and rewards failure.
    - badsock 11y ago
      I don't get how some people seem to think that there's only two possible political systems in the world. When I say redistributive, I mean things like progressive taxation, estate taxes, and basic income. In terms of median household income, the US places 6th in the world (and dropping), behind 5 countries whose taxation systems are significantly more progressive, so I dispute your claim of "equal levels of misery": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income I really do understand that incentives matter, and that progressive taxation is also progressively disincentivizing. However, the countries in the world that have a better quality of life for the majority of their people are to the left of America, not to the right. And I'm more swayed by data than abstract economic theories.
mikeash 11y ago
The tech workers who make up the majority of my friends and acquaintances are heavily left-leaning. What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support? I think it's ironic that you go through this (IMO justified) rant about how awful politics is, and then immediately turn around and propose your own political philosophy as the answer. Sorry, but libertarianism is still politics. I'm sure you have plenty of answers about how that's not true and your way is inherently different from all the others, but they all say that.
- jerf 11y ago
  "What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support?" Moral authority over conservatives, and cleansing of the sins of racism and other -isms and damage against Mother Earth by voting properly (and possibly some targeted donations). I'm not sure how to do a good Google search for this but you can find some science on how people who perform token acts of environmentalism or race consciousness then often account to themselves some "moral capital" which they immediately spend, e.g. "Yeah, I flew to the mountains to ski but I recycle my trash so it all works out." Conservatives are of course selling purity (a concept that actually goes quite deep; google "disgust" for some recent and fascinating research on this human characteristic) and tradition, and feeding into outrage about various changes going on. Libertarianism (disclaimer: I mostly identify here) sells on the idea of secret understandings that few people have, invoking the ancient "mystery religion" [1] psychological programs that are actually surprisingly absent in the modern world. Many variants also have more than a whiff of "if we just did this ONE THING all our problems would be solved", offering an appealing unified theory of why everything sucks so hard that has the advantage of near-unfalsifiability since the realistic chances of any major libertarian polity rapidly approaches zero as its size grows, while being very appealing simplified. (See also gold-buggery... "one simple thing" that would fix our whole economy.) All the political positions are selling emotional appeals. Oh, and in the middle of this tumult there's some policy things too, but who really votes for those? Policies are tied together in really weird ways, and there is a far greater of cohesion of beliefs into "blocs" than you'd expect with a naive model of beliefs. Either our understanding of human psychology is still really limited and there's some good reason that the various beliefs are tied together, "team" voting is vastly disproportional in power vs. what it theoretically should be, or some combination of both, as I could argue both pretty well with various science results that have been coming out over the past 10 years. [1]: This is a technical term, BTW; you may have a fun time googling it if you've never heard of it before.
grokys 11y ago
Wait, did you just equate caring for minorities and people in positions where they can easily be taking advantage of, to buying TVs for people branded with a politicians face? I think you did. And you did it in an incredibly condescending manner to boot. If that's what waking up feels like, I'd rather stay asleep thank you.
DannoHung 11y ago
I often wonder if people who advocate for libertarianism are aware of the history of feudalism. Like, you know that there are a bunch of places in the world that fundamentally operate on libertarian rulesets, right? You can go and try to be a warlord in the unrule-y sections of Africa or the Middle East if you really believe so strongly in it. What exactly makes you philosophically opposed to living in the society you want that exists today rather than changing the society you live in to be different? Do you just not like the idea of learning the lingua franca?
- didgeoridoo 11y ago
  This "if you like libertarianism so much, why don't you move to Somalia?" meme has got to stop. You're thinking of anarchism. Libertarianism REQUIRES a strong rule of law to ensure that individuals cannot trample on each other's rights.
  - ancap 11y ago
    Anarchism, at least anarcho-capitalism (there are many flavors of anarchism), also requires a strong rule of law. The difference is the law is enforced through private parties, and the enforcement of law is reactive to the initialization of force. There is one overarching law and that is the non-aggression principle.
kevin_thibedeau 11y ago
> Think Libertarian. That requires free thought. Something which is actively suppressed in the US since it threatens those who lead the sheep around.
MichaelGG 11y ago
They do it in Guatemala, too, and it's hilarious. Essentially, for a free meal and bus ride and some empty rhetoric, you can get people out en masse to protest or vote. And since many voters can't read well and the country is a mess, political adverts are just a couple weird words, like "No extortion!" The best advert I've seen is literally "Jimmy for President. Not a thief."
DominikD 11y ago
There's no better handout than tax cuts for corporations that fund a politician. I'm so glad that this isn't something morally superior right doesn't do. Except that, yeah, life's not Ayn Rand's book.
- ancap 11y ago
  The notion that having less of your money forcibly taken from you is a form of welfare really baffles my mind.

CoffeeDregs 11y ago

Nancy Kress wrote Beggars in Spain to explore nearly this exact topic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beggars_in_Spain In the book, the upperclass controls all capital and productivity and, literally and directly, buys the votes necessary to stay in office. That, the quote above, is the left wing's preferred approach to amassing votes everywhere in the world. I happen to agree with much of what you say, but it's not just the left wing. See Medicare Part D (http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/medicare-part-b-tea-party-opinions-columnists-bruce-bartlett.html http://www.forbes.com/2009/10/01/medicare-part-b-tea-party-o...)...

rebootthesystem 11y ago
Well, buying votes is the nature of politics. I happen to think that the left is far more despicable than the right because they claim to be for the little guys and the poor, use and abuse them for votes and then toss them aside until the next election. What's incomprehensible is that the masses keep getting duped and and the come back with more votes. And, BTW, I am not only pointing the finger at the US political system. This is true almost everywhere. The particularly nasty examples are in most of Latin America, where the ruling parties (all leftists, socialists) play the masses like finely tuned violins, keep getting voted into office and all the get in return is more misery. Every single politician walks away rich, entitled, protected from legal repercussions. Talk about the 1 percent. Despicable.

selimthegrim 11y ago

I actually got confused today because someone posted a picture of the religious leader nicknamed Amma and and I was like wait who, doesn't she have breakfast cereal named after her?

asdfzxc 11y ago
Different Amma.

sigzero 11y ago

"A democracy is always temporary in nature; it simply cannot exist as a permanent form of government. A democracy will continue to exist up until the time that voters discover they can vote themselves gifts from the public treasury. From that moment on, the PEOPLE WILL ALWAYS VOTE FOR THOSE WHO PROMISE THE MOST BENEFITS from the public treasury, with the result that every democracy will finally collapse due to loose fiscal policy, which is always followed by a dictatorship."

thrownaway2424 11y ago
Do you normally quote The Daily Oklahoman, or only on special occasions?

Frondo 11y ago

The right gives things away too--they just give things away to corporations and to the wealthy. Libertarians are right alongside that--it's a huge gift of power to the corporations. The individual would get squeezed hard in a libertarian world.

ancap 11y ago
It's a myth that the "left" does not do this as well. "Obamacare", food stamps and many other welfare programs are indirect corporate welfare. The military industrial complex, perhaps the most egregious example of corporate welfare is whole heartedly supported by both sides. Further evidence is how the same big banks donate huge amounts of money to candidates from both parties.
rwallace 11y ago
Speaking as someone who self-identifies as a pragmatic libertarian, if I were in charge, the way I would try to help the 99% would start with getting rid of a lot of ways the law supports rent-seeking behaviour by corporations and the wealthy in the form of things like enforced noncompete agreements, zoning laws, licensing and bureaucracy that hurt small businesses more than big ones and reduce competition among employers, credentialism et cetera.

badsock 11y ago

I make enough money that any swing to the left generally costs me more than I gain from it. I don't vote that way because of narrow self-interest, I do it because I want a better society to live in, and the majority of the hard data I've seen says that a redistributive system results in a better society.

oldmanjay 11y ago
The USSR notwithstanding. Or whatever it is China does.
- briandear 11y ago
  Redistribution results in one thing: equal levels of misery. Re: Cuba, Venenzuela, pre-Deng Xiaoping China, the Warsaw Pact countries, Vietnam. Standards of living are higher in capitalist countries, that's a fact. Aside from the insane, nobody in 1987 said, "Citizenship in the USSR would be so much I nicer than here in the U.S." Also interesting: the lines around US consulates to get immigrant visas-- they often extend around the block. Every single day. The line outside the Cuban embassy? None. If a redistributive economy is best, why aren't Latin Americans sneaking into Cuba instead of into the United States? Why aren't the Hondurans making the trip to Venenzuela instead of risking the danger of crossing through Mexico to get to the United States? I would offer that the poorest people in the world all want to go to the U.S. Not because of redistributive policies, but because of opportunity. You can't become rich in Cuba. You can't even start a business of any consequence there. You can't get capital loans. what's the incentive to innovate and work hard if the government is just going to steal your efforts. The government should have a regressive tax;bathe current tax system actually penalizes success and rewards failure.
  - badsock 11y ago
    I don't get how some people seem to think that there's only two possible political systems in the world. When I say redistributive, I mean things like progressive taxation, estate taxes, and basic income. In terms of median household income, the US places 6th in the world (and dropping), behind 5 countries whose taxation systems are significantly more progressive, so I dispute your claim of "equal levels of misery": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_household_income I really do understand that incentives matter, and that progressive taxation is also progressively disincentivizing. However, the countries in the world that have a better quality of life for the majority of their people are to the left of America, not to the right. And I'm more swayed by data than abstract economic theories.

mikeash 11y ago

The tech workers who make up the majority of my friends and acquaintances are heavily left-leaning. What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support? I think it's ironic that you go through this (IMO justified) rant about how awful politics is, and then immediately turn around and propose your own political philosophy as the answer. Sorry, but libertarianism is still politics. I'm sure you have plenty of answers about how that's not true and your way is inherently different from all the others, but they all say that.

jerf 11y ago
"What is the US left wing supposedly giving away to them to buy their support?" Moral authority over conservatives, and cleansing of the sins of racism and other -isms and damage against Mother Earth by voting properly (and possibly some targeted donations). I'm not sure how to do a good Google search for this but you can find some science on how people who perform token acts of environmentalism or race consciousness then often account to themselves some "moral capital" which they immediately spend, e.g. "Yeah, I flew to the mountains to ski but I recycle my trash so it all works out." Conservatives are of course selling purity (a concept that actually goes quite deep; google "disgust" for some recent and fascinating research on this human characteristic) and tradition, and feeding into outrage about various changes going on. Libertarianism (disclaimer: I mostly identify here) sells on the idea of secret understandings that few people have, invoking the ancient "mystery religion" [1] psychological programs that are actually surprisingly absent in the modern world. Many variants also have more than a whiff of "if we just did this ONE THING all our problems would be solved", offering an appealing unified theory of why everything sucks so hard that has the advantage of near-unfalsifiability since the realistic chances of any major libertarian polity rapidly approaches zero as its size grows, while being very appealing simplified. (See also gold-buggery... "one simple thing" that would fix our whole economy.) All the political positions are selling emotional appeals. Oh, and in the middle of this tumult there's some policy things too, but who really votes for those? Policies are tied together in really weird ways, and there is a far greater of cohesion of beliefs into "blocs" than you'd expect with a naive model of beliefs. Either our understanding of human psychology is still really limited and there's some good reason that the various beliefs are tied together, "team" voting is vastly disproportional in power vs. what it theoretically should be, or some combination of both, as I could argue both pretty well with various science results that have been coming out over the past 10 years. [1]: This is a technical term, BTW; you may have a fun time googling it if you've never heard of it before.

grokys 11y ago

Wait, did you just equate caring for minorities and people in positions where they can easily be taking advantage of, to buying TVs for people branded with a politicians face? I think you did. And you did it in an incredibly condescending manner to boot. If that's what waking up feels like, I'd rather stay asleep thank you.

DannoHung 11y ago

I often wonder if people who advocate for libertarianism are aware of the history of feudalism. Like, you know that there are a bunch of places in the world that fundamentally operate on libertarian rulesets, right? You can go and try to be a warlord in the unrule-y sections of Africa or the Middle East if you really believe so strongly in it. What exactly makes you philosophically opposed to living in the society you want that exists today rather than changing the society you live in to be different? Do you just not like the idea of learning the lingua franca?

didgeoridoo 11y ago
This "if you like libertarianism so much, why don't you move to Somalia?" meme has got to stop. You're thinking of anarchism. Libertarianism REQUIRES a strong rule of law to ensure that individuals cannot trample on each other's rights.
- ancap 11y ago
  Anarchism, at least anarcho-capitalism (there are many flavors of anarchism), also requires a strong rule of law. The difference is the law is enforced through private parties, and the enforcement of law is reactive to the initialization of force. There is one overarching law and that is the non-aggression principle.

kevin_thibedeau 11y ago

> Think Libertarian. That requires free thought. Something which is actively suppressed in the US since it threatens those who lead the sheep around.

MichaelGG 11y ago

They do it in Guatemala, too, and it's hilarious. Essentially, for a free meal and bus ride and some empty rhetoric, you can get people out en masse to protest or vote. And since many voters can't read well and the country is a mess, political adverts are just a couple weird words, like "No extortion!" The best advert I've seen is literally "Jimmy for President. Not a thief."

DominikD 11y ago

There's no better handout than tax cuts for corporations that fund a politician. I'm so glad that this isn't something morally superior right doesn't do. Except that, yeah, life's not Ayn Rand's book.

ancap 11y ago
The notion that having less of your money forcibly taken from you is a form of welfare really baffles my mind.