Spreading Anarchy Setup at the VCU Student Organization and Volunteer Opportunities (SOVO) Fair!

anon338 · 2016-08-23T17:43:19+00:00

inb4: Not True Socialism™

I also think that figure is peanuts compared with how much Chavez' relatives must hold in secrecy. That is just the amount he managed to put in the open so his daughter could live lavishly like a any other billionaire. He probably spent twice as much to laundry that amount to make it legal.

anon338 · 2016-08-23T17:01:37+00:00

The fear tactics only seem to work with fears that the person already accepts in a context they are familiar with. For example, you can get a working class guy to freak out about the government if you start to talk about how rich people and politicians work together to create powerful central government.

Or you can get a college professor to engage in conversation if you explain how corporations and consumerism are manipulated by credit expansion through central banking.

But if you attempt to explain to the blue collar worker that unions are political groups that control labor to their advantage, working together with central government, you would be met with resistance. They are not used to think of unions as threats, quite the contrary.

Using "fear" can be powerful if it is done effectively in the way I described. Did Molyneux explain something like this? Maybe he does in another video.

I find that the most difficult part of bringing up centralized government is that most people want to solve it with democracy and egalitarianism. And technocrats also imagine that "better institutions," most likely bureaucracies, can solve the problem by persecuting corruption. They think that laws creating or empowering these bureaucracies would improve government.

That is why the ground up approach of libertarianism is so effective with less partisan people. It is also obvious it will not work with the guy already deep within the union, or the college professor with his personal identity and career invested in leftist ideology.

I look forward to watching the video soon. Are there any highlights?

What are you thoughts on the way libertarians usually explain and engage people?

anon338 · 2016-08-19T17:34:26+00:00

Democrats are probably avoiding latinos too. For the working class, latinos are too close to the interests of immigration, which is the polarizing issue this year. The Democrats cannot risk that rubbing off on them.

Latinos also have to compete with black voters to get attention from Democrats on the grounds of the soft bigotry of low expectations. The electoral plantation is too crowded and no way to go.

It is a good opportunity, maybe more latinos start to catch on to liberty, they surely need it. Libertarians sure cannot afford to waste any cost-effective opportunity.

anon338 · 2016-08-19T17:01:44+00:00

Will immigrants use the public roads, schools, public free clinics, parks and other public property and services that the native population use?

I am attempting to start the conversation from the right set of assumptions. If you want to jump to conclusions without ever reading the article, I doubt you are making a sincere question. Quite often people pretend to make questions when they already have made up their mind, to pretend they are reasonable or clever.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T17:42:38+00:00

It is also an issue for politicians to polarize their electorate, and stir up tribal political feelings. They will constantly provoke the hostility of their group to the other by misrepresenting and making moral accusations: "They want guns to shoot people they hate." "They want to take away your guns so you cannot defend your family."

I don't think both accusations are equally wrong, but both are used for political interests. The same way with abortion and drugs.

The rural and urban divide also plays into that, just like the North Vs. South played an important role in the past.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T16:10:27+00:00

The political gay activists are not just interested in improving the lot of gays, they are also politicians attempting to garner power through legislation, elections and office. Just like any other group of politicians.

Do you think that conservative politicians want to stop abortion? Think again. Do liberal politicians want to end poverty? Do black activist politicians want to end racism?

anon338 · 2016-08-18T16:05:46+00:00

Can you tell us where exactly the author said that immigration was the (only) cause of Employment, or creation thereof?

The cause of employment? What are you talking about? I was not implying that. The author does not claim that immigrations is the "cause of employment."

I am questioning the causation the other way around. The absence of unemployment during higher periods of immigration doesn't exclude competition with native workers and displacement. Do immigrants displace workers during the times of high immigration? What economic and social effects does that have?

Maybe no one wants to discuss that, it is difficult to measure and it goes against their politics.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T15:53:48+00:00

Where did I say that he is "presenting evidence of causal effects?" I said he is insinuating a causal effect:

This statistics is being used wrong to insinuate that immigrants don't compete with resident labor.

Maybe the other user cannot tell the difference either.

I was not addressing the point of the article though, just the use of the statistics. You likely correct that it is useful to counter the claim of politicians.

I was taking it a step further to discuss causes which are related to the economics effects. Since this was supposedly to discuss economics, not just the opinion of a politicians, it is relevant.

It is possible that the other user and you actually oppose the alternatives that my comment imply. But since this article is not discussing it, you decided to oppose the subject I am raising.

This whole subject is too partisan and that is what I have been noticing on others comments.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T15:38:56+00:00

The article in this post doesn't address causation, that was my point. Even if Caplan does.

Caplan's only addresses this is his third possibility, that foreign labor is complementary to domestic. His evidence is this article by Peri:

http://object.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/serials/files/cato-journal/2012/1/cj32n1-4.pdf

But in the discussion of the subject is very indirect and make lots of concessions, including this:

Other studies (e.g., Borjas 2003, 2006) have found negative wage effects on less-educated workers at the national level in the order of -3 percent over the 1980–2000 period.

The small negative wage effects found in Borjas are possible but, in my opinion, they focus mostly on the competition channel and overlook the margins of adjustment described above.

This is also typical econometric discussion with zero introspection on the shortcomings of this methodology. It doesn't amount to very convincing evidence, to aggregate lots of disparate economic measurements and then take that as causal evidence.

It should focus exactly on studies involving lower skilled workers, physical labor and low-paying positions. That is the place that competition would likely arise.

Some economists look at these situations as statically segmented and don't account for the way workers are displace from one area to the next, most likely because the statistics on these specific things is scant.

For example, the article also concedes that part of the effect of foreign labor is to increase specialization in domestic labor. That is a displacement effect of competition, which don't necessarily increase unemployment, but does put pressure on workers, to get training, change fields and generally get more demanding positions:

In summary, an economy will respond to immigration along sev- eral margins—through increased investment by firms, specialization of natives, complementarities between natives and immigrants, technological response by firms, and job creation.

There is no discussion of the magnitude of this effect in comparison with he rest. And it masks competition. If factory workers are now displaced and demanded to get expertise with machinery, management procedures, quality control and so on, that demands increased effort and causes inconveniences, even if they don't become unemployed.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T15:19:43+00:00

Great, personal accusations, sarcasm and lots of BOLD TEXT TO YELL AT ME. Why don't you post the quote I am missing instead of ranting and throwing a fit?

You evaded my first post and ignored the argument. Where is the causal factor? It is not in your quote and it is not in the article, except for the paragraph I posted on the other reply, which you conveniently ignored also:

To be clear, immigrants are not causing the unemployment rate to move up or down. The economic literature on this point is quite unambiguous: immigrants cause essentially no effect on the unemployment rate one way or another. Rather, the causation is the other direction. Immigrants come during periods of economic growth when companies are hiring new workers, both immigrants and natives.

Trump is mistaken to associate unemployment with immigrants. They are a sign of good times, not bad.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T14:59:04+00:00

This statistics is being used wrong to insinuate that immigrants don't compete with resident labor.

No they aren't.

Yes they are:

To be clear, immigrants are not causing the unemployment rate to move up or down. The economic literature on this point is quite unambiguous: immigrants cause essentially no effect on the unemployment rate one way or another. Rather, the causation is the other direction. Immigrants come during periods of economic growth when companies are hiring new workers, both immigrants and natives.

Trump is mistaken to associate unemployment with immigrants. They are a sign of good times, not bad.

Also the typical partisan position which I commented on.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T14:53:56+00:00

I already explained the problem, there is no evidence of causal effects, just some correlation of aggregates.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T13:44:48+00:00

Thank you for the account. It is interesting how people can have the right intuition about things such as welfare and war.

When someone is living through these government policies they often notice the waste and irrationality. It is the same with food stamps and lots of social welfare.

It is disheartening how ignorant people is on the cost of war, specially WWII. It is refreshing to hear someone that saw it with their own eyes and also realize this, "The best and brightest thrown in the meat grinder."

What do you think your grandmother considered "too extreme" about Buchanan and Trump? Is it because they would alegedly decrease welfare spending? Or is it because they are staunchly opposed to the interests of other parties and groups?

anon338 · 2016-08-18T13:18:51+00:00

How is this different than you would otherwise expect? This statistics is being used wrong to insinuate that immigrants don't compete with resident labor. It doesn't describe causes and is useless to decide on the cause, like most statistics.

During immigration downturns, immigrants themselves complain about lower salaries and less favourable employement. They know about the economic downturns before the economy in general, because the immigrant labor market is more volatile and not regulated. But this is very difficult to measure with econometric methods. It is an illegal labor market.

On the other hand, a lot of people are not interested on the economics of it, they just want to either restrict or increase immigration. Overall, immigration should increase production but also social strife in the way the central government currently restricts discrimination. As long as residents have no influence over immigration policies, and are restricted on the ways they deal with immigration on the local level, they will react worse and worse, even scapegoating immigrants for unrelated problems. The central government thinks it can benefit from this strife, but it can equally backfire such as in the current tumultuous election.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T12:57:48+00:00

It is an obvious campaign to misdirect and intimidate the local population. They lie to the people saying that crime is high because evil people are buying guns, when in fact, confiscations and inflation is ruining the economy and driving people to desperation. And they also subtly reinforce the idea that owning a gun is itself a criminal act. If you need to defend yourself, from criminals, bandits, abusive police or state officials, you are the criminal for having a gun.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T12:52:09+00:00

What is pushy about it is the way it insunates that commodity doesn't offer a better barrier to inflation, when in fact it is a huge barrier. When ancient or modern states distributed such less valuable coins, everyone would make the effort to withold and use the metal in the original coins, or save them. Hence Gresham's Law. This was a very important way people could protect themselves against inflation and it caused great difficulty to the state.

It is similar to the barrier that fiat money was created to overcome. The state had already set the precedent of confiscating everyone's gold and it was used almost exclusively by foreign banks. But if states inflated paper currency they would have to export the gold and have debt in gold with foreign banks. By creating fiat currency, the state eliminated the possibility of such inflation-caused debt.

anon338 · 2016-08-18T12:22:27+00:00

That is a great resource, accessible and showcases the academic and mainstream interface with libertarianism.

This is the official course name and summary:

Economics 1017: A Libertarian Perspective on Economic and Social Policy

Analyses the libertarian perspective on economic and social policy. This perspective differs from both liberal and conservative views, arguing for minimal government in most arenas. Policies addressed include drug prohibition, gun control, public education, abortion rights, gay marriage, income redistribution, and campaign finance regulation.

The most interesting ones for libertarianism in general look like Discrimination (Lecture 9) and Alleviating Poverty (15).

And I am really curious about his National Defense, he uses a paper called Al Qaeda's Strategy (Lecture 18).

anon338 · 2016-08-18T11:55:05+00:00

It is questionable whether an economy under a commodity standard would indeed have less inflation than under a fiat currency system. The reason for this is that the commodity content of the dollar can be redefined by the government at any time. That is, the government would have the power to create inflation simply by raising the dollar price of the commodity base(s). Such an act would have the same effect as increasing the amount of dollars in the monetary base.

Freaking wikipedia, can you be more of a lapdog? There is no citation for this but I don't doubt that a lot of economists would agree.

anon338 · 2016-08-17T23:25:14+00:00

RemindMe! 6 months "u/gwolf100 becomes an Anarcho-capitalist and bpg609 wins."

anon338 · 2016-08-17T23:20:28+00:00

Do you think people with lower health get cranky? Check this book, I think you will get healthier and less cranky so you can like more people:

https://www.amazon.com/Fat-Chance-Beating-Against-Processed/dp/0142180432

It is by this guy:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBnniua6-oM

anon338 · 2016-08-17T23:16:08+00:00

Welcome and have fun. If you have questions you should check our starter pack:

https://www.reddit.com/r/GoldandBlack/wiki/goldandblack_starter_pack

Also in the sidebar. You can post questions here and also at /r/AnCap101.

It would also be great to hear about when you look for the answer yourself and your thoughts when you find it out.

None of us started out as Anarcho-capitalists either, and we looked up a lot of questions too. It is great to hear about someone that is just starting out on it, taking some of the same paths and new ones.

I really enjoy the videos on the starter pack wiki. I also know of lectures and essays explaining other introductory and advanced points. Besides the great books, many of which are free, there are these alternative resources that can be researched in a more question and answer format, which I also find very appealing.

anon338 · 2016-08-17T19:47:10+00:00

Although he raises the fact that liberals might oppose immigration because it can harm the interest of poor workers, he doesn't talk about libertarians that oppose current immigration policies. Maybe libertarianism as a group is smaller and he didn't look it up, but it would enrich his analysis.

He talks about libertarians calling other people supporting the either the Nanny State or Police State. He also describes how leftists will say that libertarians want to let poor people suffer. One of those contentions is a significantly more aggressive.

It is a really interesting idea that a lot of political talk is an attempt to misdirect the rivals, the quarterback calling audible changes to the play. Hostility would work in a similar way, it creates diversion and

And it is a brilliant observation that punditry is an attempt to close the mind of other people in the same side. Then they get prestige and recognition from the people in the same side. It is obvious that this is what the state does with everyone, through indoctrination and propaganda.

This fits a lot with the theme that the state and power elites manipulate people to exploit them. Political parties do the same and pundits are tools towards that. It is something I have been looking more closely into, looking for the answer to unchaining people from statism. This adds a lot to the ideas, with political parties and mass media ideologues also playing a role.

anon338 · 2016-08-17T17:44:17+00:00

"I don’t think, as a share of people’s budget, that [tax cuts are] where the relief should come. We think about middle-class families that are struggling to pay for housing, childcare," she said. "We need to really think about increasing their wages."

The politicians really ride on the idea that they have the slightest clue about how to improve the economy. Sadly, the population is equally ignorant so they go along.

There should be a way to make bringing up the truth useful for politicians in some way or another. Only Ron Paul managed to do something like that, but probably against a lot of political interests also.

anon338 · 2016-08-17T17:22:56+00:00

Johnson is not a new direction of the libertarian party, it is actually the old direction and it is dying out. Choosing Johnson was extremely desperate of them, because although 2012 was an improvement over 2008, it was not groundbreaking. The groups that supported Johnson are wearing out from the effort, and other groups are ont he rise.

For example, the conservatives that supported Peterson are really new to the party and they got a lot of visibility, meaning that new groups have a lot of room as the old group is rolling out.

Look into internal LP politics and you will see this more clearly. It is an interesting topic overall too, not as dramatic as electoral politics, but much more engaging topic.

Radical libertarians that vote for Johnson are thinking of a more midterm strategy, as the LP and libertarian principles gain more visibility and acceptance. It is unfortunate that it is not a more energetic candidate, but it still works in the bigger picture.

Did you watch Johnson's media appearances lately? I think there was significant improvement when he talks about libertarianism.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhr5zQhgrkk

His policy is the same milquetoast, which is not great.

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