<p>There is no point of going to church except for fear, ignorance or culture (good reason). Going to church is not a moral.</p>
<p>Morals are good to have even if God does not exist -- he doesn't. Morals come from man and are a social contract we tacitly sign. Morals help you lead a proper life with meaning and keep the world from falling apart.</p>
<p>If someone is good only because he fears the wrath of God, he is not good; he is obedient.</p>
<p>If someone is trying to kill you and in order to save yourself you kill him first, what then?</p>
<p>All I'm saying is a hardline view on morals (i.e., ignoring the context of the situation) is plain ignant.</p>
<p>
[quote]
If someone is trying to kill you and in order to save yourself you kill him first, what then?</p>
<p>All I'm saying is a hardline view on morals (i.e., ignoring the context of the situation) is plain ignant.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Response:
[quote]
The non-aggression axiom is the lynchpin of the philosophy of libertarianism. It states, simply, that it shall be legal for anyone to do anything he wants, provided only that he not initiate <a href="or%20threaten">B</a>** violence against the person or legitimately owned property of another. That is, in the free society, one has the right to manufacture, buy or sell any good or service at any mutually agreeable terms. Thus, there would be no victimless crime prohibitions, price controls, government regulation of the economy, etc.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The</a> Non-Aggression Axiom of Libertarianism by Walter Block</p>
<p>
[quote]
By the way, I don't really trust von Mises, so all these links to the LvMI aren't really going to convince me.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And I don't trust Ida Tarbell. Her dad was put out of the oil producing business by Standard Oil. The links about robber barons I cited are well-referenced.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For Vanderbilt, Gould, and other railroad magnates, it's pretty well acknowledged that they used bribery, rebates, and kickbacks to get contracts and land grants.</p>
<p>"The moral effect of this system on employees is even a more serious feature of the case than the injustice it works to competition. For a "consideration" railroad freight clerks give confidential information concerning freight going through their hands.It would certainly be quite as legitimate for post-office clerks to allow Mr. Rockefeller to read the private letters of his competitors, as it is that the clerks of a railroad give him data concerning their shipments. Everybody through whose hands such information passes is contaminated by the knowledge." - History of the Standard Oil Co., Ida Tarbell</p>
<p>You make repeated references to James Hill, but that is just one example of a Gilded Age entrepreneur who was not a robber baron. If you can prove that Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, and Morgan were all fair, just, and moral, I'll believe you.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Give me a reputable source and I'll believe you. I just haven't seen evidence that these guys were all robber barons. Standard Oil had super low oil prices and more innovation than any competitor shortly before it was busted. To say that Standard Oil was a political entrepreneur requires some more evidence. Who wins when oil prices are at an all-time low and the trust is broken up? Certainly not the consumer.</p>
<p>But in any case, it's not up to me to prove that they were moral. It is up to you to prove they were immoral. Ida Tarbell is not a reputable source. I'm certainly not close-minded and focusing on false narratives, so I may end up agreeing that some of the aforementioned people were "robber barons" (i.e. political entrepreneurs).</p>
<p>
[quote]
In a state in which you don't do anything evil because you don't do anything at all, you are not good. You would be neither good nor evil. Good is not "not evil".
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Why is this wordplay so important to you? I mean good and evil are such vague descriptions. Doing nothing is not evil. It's as simple as that. Call that good or neutral. Whatever. It's not evil and it's pointless to argue past that. What you're trying to do is to attribute your personal preferences to "good" (i.e. donating to charity). So does it really matter if a baby is "neutral" or "good"? They are objectively the same thing.</p>
<p>
[quote]
But having a job that pays very little is almost as bad, or worse, as having no job.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Are you seriously trying to argue this again? I thought we went over this. 3>0. You are trying to argue 0>3 with an implication that minimum wage will create higher wages. And not that many actually get paid minimum wage. To assume people stay there their whole lives is ridiculous.</p>
<p>
[quote]
One could argue that being able to survive (which you call "cushy job conditions") is a right, not a privilege. However, the right to contract only applies to government interference in contracts, especially to violating their terms. In America, we haven't even fully established the right to contract, which is a good thing to some extent. However, the point is that these unemployed people still have the right to form contracts, just not the opportunity. Therefore, their rights are not being violated. There is no "right" to a job.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So being threatened with violence if you pay less than minimum wage still constitutes a right to form a contract? Let me put it this way: Mexican men want a $3/hr job to pump gas at a station. Station manager is willing to do so and hires 10 people. Police finds out and fines manager. Manager does not comply and gets sent to jail (i.e. contempt of court, other BS charges, etc.) Manager tries to escape and gets shot. I don't know what would happen to the Mexicans but I'm sure something similar would happen.</p>
<p>Neither the Mexicans nor the manager did any sort of violent act, yet they were acted upon with violence.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Both of us know that unemployment varies based on swings in the busines cycle, and even with government interference to flatten the business cycle, there will always be unemployment. Now, I'm not saying that the unemployed should just die. We've established enough social programs (welfare and unemployment benefits) to deal with that.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Umm..no. The government is the root cause of business cycles.
Austrian</a> Business Cycle Theory - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>I can't say that unemployment would be 0% without minimum wage, but markets would become more efficient as labor becomes affordable for certain jobs and thus unemployment would go way down.</p>
<p>
[quote]
By the way, a "null hypothesis" is a hypothesis that is assumed to be true and must be disproven through statistical evidence.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I guess the null hypothesis would be "a good environment (e.g. good parents and other things) is required for a good child. "</p>
<p>
[quote]
In some cases, working for money isn't as good. If you have nothing better to do and no need for money and you decide to work, wouldn't it be better not to waste the money of donors or taxpayers? I'm not saying that working for compensation is evil.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well sure. And communism would work if nobody cared about capital. But that's clearly not the case. Furthermore, most (if not all) charities involve profits. The term "non-profit" just means there aren't shareholders. There actually is profit. Otherwise, the workers would not be paid.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Well, how do you know? Just the fact that a person does something does not prove that it is in his interest. Now, it would some weird for it not to be, but one has to deal with even the strangest possibilities.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As I said before, determining a person's interest is not subject to debate. I am interested in soda so I buy a coke. You cannot debate that and say "you don't like coke".</p>
<p>1) to say morals come from man,
to say that there is no god
are assertions neither proved nor disproved.</p>
<p>2)well of course there is no reason to pray to a god that does not exist.
to come to Him, one must first believe that He is.</p>
<p>3) Pseudoral
"If someone is good only because he fears the wrath of God, he is not good;he is obedient."
LOL! you will make a fine evangelist. you just stated 1/2 the gospel.</p>
<p>Where else do morals come from? Where did the Bible -- a book a lot of peopel take morals from -- come from? Where did the idea of God come about? You can say morals came from the idea of God but that idea came from man? This is logic. Logic is proof.</p>
<p>To say we cannot disregard the idea of God because it has not been disproven is absolutely retarded and archaic. Do we tell scientists to think of other sources of lightning like Zeus? I am not talking about the deist God but the theist God. The deist God would not even be relevant in a discussion of morals. </p>
<p>There can be reason to pray to a non-existing God. It is the same as telling yourself that you will succeed before you do something. It breeds ignorant confidence. </p>
<p>And you comment about the preacher. The preacher is leaning towards faith in relation to your quote. I am leaning towards reason.</p>
<p>"to come to Him, one must first believe that He is."
<em>**? Edit: What the *</em>*k?</p>
<p>I noticed above that you asked me about situations in which we don't know enough to really make an accurate judgment. I didn't notice this the first time through the post. Think about many of the people that our court system sentenced to death who now, through DNA evidence, we know are innocent. At that time, we did not know enough to make an accurate judgment on their situation. Well, in some cases, we probably did, and it was just the possibility of error present in all judgments that led to the false convictions. Both those are the exceptions rather than the rules.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
And I don't trust Ida Tarbell. Her dad was put out of the oil producing business by Standard Oil. The links about robber barons I cited are well-referenced.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Most of the references are to other libertarians. If you have evidence from a prominent modern (non-classical) far-left liberal (like me) or a completely objective source, then I may begin to believe you, depending on the strength of the argument.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Give me a reputable source and I'll believe you. I just haven't seen evidence that these guys were all robber barons.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>For the statements about railroad magnates, kickbacks and bribery, The American Nation by John A. Garraty, Chapters 17-20. The book is commonly used as a high school history textbook. Garraty is (or was, I'm not sure which) Governeur Morris Professor of History at Columbia. Sparknotes (not that I use it) also says: "Union Pacific officials, for example, formed the dummy Cr</p>
<p>
[quote]
I noticed above that you asked me about situations in which we don't know enough to really make an accurate judgment. I didn't notice this the first time through the post. Think about many of the people that our court system sentenced to death who now, through DNA evidence, we know are innocent. At that time, we did not know enough to make an accurate judgment on their situation. Well, in some cases, we probably did, and it was just the possibility of error present in all judgments that led to the false convictions. Both those are the exceptions rather than the rules.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The comparison is faulty because Newtonian physics is accurate enough for low speeds. Similarly, moral propositions can have an accurate enough truth value to them. To say that there is "some uncertainty" so we must discount all possibilities of truth is grossly misrepresenting the vast majority of situations.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Most of the references are to other libertarians. If you have evidence from a prominent modern (non-classical) far-left liberal (like me) or a completely objective source, then I may begin to believe you, depending on the strength of the argument.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, what is a "completely objective source"? None of your sources would fit this description. My sources don't have a personal agenda though.</p>
<p>
[quote]
For the statements about railroad magnates, kickbacks and bribery, The American Nation by John A. Garraty, Chapters 17-20. The book is commonly used as a high school history textbook. Garraty is (or was, I'm not sure which) Governeur Morris Professor of History at Columbia. Sparknotes (not that I use it) also says: "Union Pacific officials, for example, formed the dummy Cr</p>
<p>funny story. so there's this girl that i despise just because she said this, not because i despised her before, i really had no opinion about her. </p>
<p>but anyways. so some random kid decided it would be hilarious to put peanut butter on her dad's car. and prankcall her home phone at 4 am. so anywho, she assumed it was me and another one of our close friends because apparently we're the only people who "hate" her. she kept iming our best friend to make us confess or else she'd call the cops. my best friend was like "haahhhh you dont even know my best friends, you pathetic *****" but then her best friend messages me on facebook and comments about my depression [which was incredibly severe at the time this took place] and told me my parents were ugly or something and i should stop sitting on my rich ass?</p>
<ol>
<li>i'm not rich. </li>
<li>my parents are not ugly, they're actually quite young-looking for their age.</li>
<li>look who's talking, slut. </li>
<li>I AM NOT RICH.</li>
</ol>
<p>so anyways i was just like wowwww what are you asking me to confess for. cause i had no idea at the time because my best friend, being the awesome person she is, just hid it cause obviously it was insignificant and me and my other friend would never do anything like that. so i call her and im like, *** is she saying this? and she was like ohhh cause she thinks you put peanut butter on her best friend's dad's car. and im like .. i dont even buy peanut butter fooooool. </p>
<p>it was fun.</p>
<p>What?^^^^^</p>
<p>Morals? Ethics?</p>
<p>if there is good
there must be evil - unless one thinks everything/every person is only good.
when one agrees that there is evil
one must agree that there is a moral law to differentiate between good & evil.</p>
<p>if there is no moral law giver,
then there is no moral law.
if there is no moral law,
then there is no good & no evil.</p>
<p>the best that one could then hope for would be to rely on the altruism of others - the altrusistic creature being the lowest in the pecking order -
OR look to ethics.</p>
<p>moral law deals with the distinction between virtue & vice.
take theism out & society removes virtue & calls vice by some other name
in order to placate the conscious.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The comparison is faulty because Newtonian physics is accurate enough for low speeds. Similarly, moral propositions can have an accurate enough truth value to them. To say that there is "some uncertainty" so we must discount all possibilities of truth is grossly misrepresenting the vast majority of situations.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I'm not claiming that the vast majority of situations are like this. For most situations, the justics system is adequate with a small possibility for error. However, there are circumstances in which the justice system must accept that it does not know enough about a situation.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Well, what is a "completely objective source"? None of your sources would fit this description. My sources don't have a personal agenda though.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>An objective source is one that balances all viewpoints but comes to a conclusion based on a range of trustworthy evidence and non-fallacious logic that it considers to be very likely to be true while accepting a possibility of error, or one that summarizes the work of another objective source. I don't really have the resources or time to go searching out such sources, so I don't expect you to be convinced I am right. You mention that your sources (Wikipedia and various libertarians) have no agenda. While Wikipedia does not, the libertarians you mostly rely on do. However, Sparknotes and PBS only have the goal of making money.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Working with my definition and the common definition of good as "not evil", then kids to grow up good in neutral environments. The evil behaviors are learned and do not form from neutral environments.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>We clearly have different definitions, so it's best not to argue about it, although it would be a bit of a stretch to say that the definition of good as "not evil" is the most commonly accepted.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
What are some useful things you can do when unemployed?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Self-improvement. For example, if you're a decent musician, you can use your time after being laid off to practice really hard and become a word-class violist. I admit that this situation in particular is unrealistic, but you should get the point.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I'd go a step further and say that econometric models are for the most part completely flawed and contradict logic. If a study finds that 1+2=2, then there is no reason to debate the invalidity of the study. Econometric models try to model dynamic human actions into mathematical models and that is why they are inaccurate so often. Economics is a social science, not a empirical science.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So you're saying that what one school of economic thought predicts is most accurate is more accurate in describing reality than statistical data? Unemployment rate and minimum wage are not dynamic actions; they are numbers, and they are mathematical whether you like it or not.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Yeah, but aren't you failing to account for how many people minimum wage keeps out of a job? What about all the immigrants who had no jobs and can now support a decent life? Leftism cannot account for this other than resorting to nativism (i.e. "secure the borders"). Not only do they want good conditions for all workers at all times, they want full employment. These are mutually exclusive ideals, so nativism has to come into play.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>About the first sentence, I think we dealt with that with the statistical model you rejected earlier (and yet appears completely sound). Anyway, the illegal immigrants usually did have jobs in Mexico (or wherever they came from). As for your attack on me for opposing illegal immigration, the fact is that I don't really oppose illegal immigration. I mean, I oppose it, but I don't consider it an important issue. They should get paid minimum wage, though. And if minimum wages keep them out, that's just an added bonus.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
So, would you use force upon "illegal immigrants" to kick them out once your welfare programs (i.e. roads, schools, hospitals) start collapsing?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>No, that's what taxes are for. Illegal immigrants should have to pay taxes, too (even though they're illegal, I don't really see much of a problem in this). Social services won't begin to collapse as long as there are taxes and those taxes are spent on those social services (instead of, say, vacations for Congressmen).</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
You need to reread that story once more. The manager was put into jail by police. He tried to escape jail and was shot by prison guards (standard procedure). He was shot (and possibly killed) despite not having done anything violent (e.g. stealing).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Think about it. The manager is not being shot for hiring illegals, he is being shot for trying to escape from jail. He has no right to consider himself above the law, even if he disagrees with it. If his disagreement was that strong, he should've moved. In any case, if I ran the prison, I wouldn't make it standard procedure to shoot attempted escapees.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
There were central banks back then too. Maybe not as centralized as teh Fed, but still they were not businesses (i.e. those that produce what people desire).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>With the exception of the National Bank under Biddle in particular, they rarely had any coordinated policy or tangible influence on the currency. Since the currency was almost exclusively representative from 1789-1940 (a prominent exception being Greenbacks during the Civil War), I don't really see how the Austrian School's business cycle theory, which according to the Wikipedia article applies mostly to fiat monetary systems, applies to early America.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Umm...the federal reserve was contracting monetary policy while everybody was borrowing. Interest rates go up and now the businesses go bankrupt since they underestimated interest rates for their investments. Since the fed is the controller of credit, that is how so many errors occur at one time.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So if so many trained entrepreneurs made errors at the same time, even though (you would argue) the government caused them, would that not make them untrustworthy? Of course, they were looking out for their own interests, but in this case, they failed to judge what their own interests were. The Federal Reserve was probably justified in using contractionary policy, just not as suddenly as they did.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I doubt they'd ever do this because psychology already is far enough to determine some of this.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Not really. It would easily be able to determine, from readily available examples, the effect of good and bad environments on crime rates, but we've never really determined the impact of a neutral environment, because of both ethical concerns and the good chance that a baby in a room full of machines would die. Remember that psychology one of those social sciences you distrust so much, and it has to derive theories and hypotheses from observations. Now, maybe philosophy would be able to predict it, but the various schools of philosophy would disagree quite a bit.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Look, you keep using a different definition of "interest". I am talking about interest in the sense of "desire". You are talking about it in the sense of objective well-being. I could sell myself to slavery so my kids get food and shelter. Is this in my interest (well-being)? No. But it is in my interest (desire).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So this person desires to open the door? Well, I'm not an expert on mind-reading, but whenever I open a door for anyone, I don't feel any desire to do so. I don't even think about it. It's mostly just a habit.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
but anyways. so some random kid decided it would be hilarious to put peanut butter on her dad's car. and prankcall her home phone at 4 am. so anywho, she assumed it was me and another one of our close friends because apparently we're the only people who "hate" her. she kept iming our best friend to make us confess or else she'd call the cops. my best friend was like "haahhhh you dont even know my best friends, you pathetic *****" but then her best friend messages me on facebook and comments about my depression [which was incredibly severe at the time this took place] and told me my parents were ugly or something and i should stop sitting on my rich ass?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Did this girl also experience hallucinations, slurred speech, or antisocial behavior?</p>
<p>Opening a door for someone else is in your interest because it is a common duty accepted by society as something good or polite to do.</p>
<p>How can you argue that employment is worse than employment. If you are employed you can choose to be unemployed by quitting. Not the other way around.</p>
<p>BTW How do you guys do those quotes????????????????????</p>
<p>
[quote]
I'm not claiming that the vast majority of situations are like this. For most situations, the justics system is adequate with a small possibility for error. However, there are circumstances in which the justice system must accept that it does not know enough about a situation.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>And to use the physics analogy again, those gray areas would require Einstenian physics. But these are not representative of usual conditions. Similarly, you don't redo experiments at 10 degrees kelvin to make sure it works in all conditions. You work within the limitations and strive for a logically consistent universal approach. If you prescribe murder upon others, then you should be prepared to accept the same fate. That is the framework I am working in.</p>
<p>
[quote]
An objective source is one that balances all viewpoints but comes to a conclusion based on a range of trustworthy evidence and non-fallacious logic that it considers to be very likely to be true while accepting a possibility of error, or one that summarizes the work of another objective source. I don't really have the resources or time to go searching out such sources, so I don't expect you to be convinced I am right. You mention that your sources (Wikipedia and various libertarians) have no agenda. While Wikipedia does not, the libertarians you mostly rely on do. However, Sparknotes and PBS only have the goal of making money.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>So, to be objective, the following should be true?:</p>
<p>a. no profit (this puts out all books and university research)
b. no agenda (this puts out all of humankind)</p>
<p>In any case, you are simply refusing to address the core arguments of my links. I, on the other hand, point toward the fundamental flaws in the methodology you use to support your theory (econometrics).</p>
<p>
[quote]
Self-improvement. For example, if you're a decent musician, you can use your time after being laid off to practice really hard and become a word-class violist. I admit that this situation in particular is unrealistic, but you should get the point.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>As pseudoreal said how can you argue that employment is worse than unemployment? With employment, you can choose to be unemployed. Furthermore, you can train your music skills while being employed (and be able to feed yourself).</p>
<p>
[quote]
So you're saying that what one school of economic thought predicts is most accurate is more accurate in describing reality than statistical data? Unemployment rate and minimum wage are not dynamic actions; they are numbers, and they are mathematical whether you like it or not.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The "one school" is founded on irrefutable logic (see: Human Action). I'm not saying the statistics gathered are inaccurate, but the conclusions drawn from it are. These models assume that a dynamic economy of people can have all but the independent and dependent variable stay constant. These statistics gathered can only be applied to a very specific narrow set of circumstances; they cannot be applied to vastly different situations (e.g. someone incorrectly saying unemployment and minimum wage have so-and-so relationship in all instances).</p>
<p>You cannot model and predict human actions with econometrics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Anyway, the illegal immigrants usually did have jobs in Mexico (or wherever they came from). As for your attack on me for opposing illegal immigration, the fact is that I don't really oppose illegal immigration. I mean, I oppose it, but I don't consider it an important issue. They should get paid minimum wage, though. And if minimum wages keep them out, that's just an added bonus.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Well, they might have had jobs but not a decent job in the US. It's beside the point. The point is that these people want to enter the US and you want to use violence upon these people.</p>
<p>Also you managed to contradict yourself one sentence apart (the bolded area). The fact remains: you want to use violence upon nonviolent people.</p>
<p>Furthermore, you keep regarding minimum wage as a floor when it is really a barrier many immigrants have to pass to be able to get a job. It is not your choice to say who can form a contract or who cannot.</p>
<p>
[quote]
No, that's what taxes are for. Illegal immigrants should have to pay taxes, too (even though they're illegal, I don't really see much of a problem in this). Social services won't begin to collapse as long as there are taxes and those taxes are spent on those social services (instead of, say, vacations for Congressmen).
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Do we really have to see another Soviet-like collapse before you realize that socialism fundamentally is insolvent?</p>
<p>In any case, you are redirecting the violence upon immigrants unto all taxpayers. Taxes are extracted by force. They were never voluntarily agreed upon.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Think about it. The manager is not being shot for hiring illegals, he is being shot for trying to escape from jail. He has no right to consider himself above the law, even if he disagrees with it. If his disagreement was that strong, he should've moved. In any case, if I ran the prison, I wouldn't make it standard procedure to shoot attempted escapees.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Escaping from a jail is a non-violent action. If a gang takes over your neighborhood and says X is a bad action and we will shoot you if you do X, is that ethical? The law is essentially a dictum from a gang saying X is a bad action and we will shoot you if you do X.</p>
<p>Also, would you say the same thing to a person in a gang-controlled city? "Too bad you got shot for doing X, you should have moved to another city where the gang is called a government and X is also bad".</p>
<p>The law is not a mutually agreed upon contract.</p>
<p>
[quote]
With the exception of the National Bank under Biddle in particular, they rarely had any coordinated policy or tangible influence on the currency. Since the currency was almost exclusively representative from 1789-1940 (a prominent exception being Greenbacks during the Civil War), I don't really see how the Austrian School's business cycle theory, which according to the Wikipedia article applies mostly to fiat monetary systems, applies to early America.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>ABCT does not solely apply to fiat currency mechanisms. It refers to any case where the currency is not determined by the market. Having a representative currency does not mean that the market is immune to simultaneous errors by many people. These currencies were still by and large affected greatly by central banks throughout American history. For two examples of central control causing massive simultaneous errors, refer to the panics of 1837, 1873 and 1893.
Panic</a> of 1837 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Panic</a> of 1873 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Panic</a> of 1893 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia</p>
<p>
[quote]
So if so many trained entrepreneurs made errors at the same time, even though (you would argue) the government caused them, would that not make them untrustworthy? Of course, they were looking out for their own interests, but in this case, they failed to judge what their own interests were. The Federal Reserve was probably justified in using contractionary policy, just not as suddenly as they did.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>The contraction was a corrective measure to the previous inflationary period. But neither massive inflationary periods, nor massive contractionary periods are symptoms of markets. These are symptoms of central control. The market corrects itself in small steps. When a guy opens up a booger taco stand, he ends up bankrupt. This does not really effect the country. But when everybody and their neighbor starts making booger tacos (or getting subsidies to grow one specific crop, etc.), these errors add up to a complete disaster. Capitalism corrects these entrepreneurial errors, whether they be caused by individuals or large groups of people. It is a healthy thing to happen to individuals since allocations of capital are moved to productive uses. When it happens to an entire industry, it is also healthy BUT it causes things like depressions and panics.</p>
<p>
[quote]
Not really. It would easily be able to determine, from readily available examples, the effect of good and bad environments on crime rates, but we've never really determined the impact of a neutral environment, because of both ethical concerns and the good chance that a baby in a room full of machines would die. Remember that psychology one of those social sciences you distrust so much, and it has to derive theories and hypotheses from observations. Now, maybe philosophy would be able to predict it, but the various schools of philosophy would disagree quite a bit.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I never said I distrust psychology or social sciences. I distrust when people try to model social sciences with statistics. There is a large area of subjectivity which is completely ignored in these decisions which are modeled.</p>
<p>
[quote]
So this person desires to open the door? Well, I'm not an expert on mind-reading, but whenever I open a door for anyone, I don't feel any desire to do so. I don't even think about it. It's mostly just a habit.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Yes, you desired it. Your arm is not autonomous. Do I really have to go over self-ownership?</p>
<p>posts 101 & 115
if someone opens a door only because they fear not doing what is socially acceptable, he is not good but obedient.</p>
<p>face it. in your world view, in order to be consistent, only a weak specimen would open the door for anyone other than those from whom one may receive some reward/advantage.
logically, in your world view, you should slam the door on people - knock them out and then:
1) capture them as a resource
2) eliminate them as a competitor for resources
3) or, as stated, open the door, grovel, and continue to conspire to capture the resources of the stronger party</p>
<p>Pseudoreal: Use [qu ote] ar the beginning and [/qu ote] and the end. The spaces are only there to prevent it from actually quoting.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
And to use the physics analogy again, those gray areas would require Einstenian physics. But these are not representative of usual conditions. Similarly, you don't redo experiments at 10 degrees kelvin to make sure it works in all conditions. You work within the limitations and strive for a logically consistent universal approach. If you prescribe murder upon others, then you should be prepared to accept the same fate. That is the framework I am working in.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>That fact that such situations exist demonstrates my point that there are some circumstances in which morality, based on what we know, is relative, because of our lack of knowledge of the situation. I'm not claiming that's the majority of the time.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
So, to be objective, the following should be true?:</p>
<p>a. no profit (this puts out all books and university research)
b. no agenda (this puts out all of humankind)</p>
<p>In any case, you are simply refusing to address the core arguments of my links. I, on the other hand, point toward the fundamental flaws in the methodology you use to support your theory (econometrics).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<ol>
<li>You have not describes any fundamental flaws in econometrics.</li>
<li>If you reject my (admittedly biased) sources out of hand, I may reject your (equally or more biased) sources.</li>
<li>Profit's OK. An agenda is as well as long as they don't let it impact their findings to a noticeable or significant extent.</li>
</ol>
<p>
[QUOTE]
As pseudoreal said how can you argue that employment is worse than unemployment? With employment, you can choose to be unemployed. Furthermore, you can train your music skills while being employed (and be able to feed yourself).
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Ok, I concede that in few situations is employment worse than unemployment. However, I still maintain my support for the minimum wage on grounds explained earlier.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
The "one school" is founded on irrefutable logic (see: Human Action). I'm not saying the statistics gathered are inaccurate, but the conclusions drawn from it are. These models assume that a dynamic economy of people can have all but the independent and dependent variable stay constant. These statistics gathered can only be applied to a very specific narrow set of circumstances; they cannot be applied to vastly different situations (e.g. someone incorrectly saying unemployment and minimum wage have so-and-so relationship in all instances).</p>
<p>You cannot model and predict human actions with econometrics.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Well, what the coefficient of determination means is that approximately 25% of the variation in unemployment rate among those with less than a high school education can be explained by the linear relationship between unemployment rate and minimum wage. The other 75% is the other stuff. I see no problem with this. Furthermore, minimum wage and unemployment rate are not "dynamic human actions," and only unemployment rate is even affected by "dynamic human actions," which, in this case, are relatively predictable. The only constraints on the population from which the sample was gathered were that the people had to be American adults (obviously), and had to have less than a high school education (the target group when dealing with minimum wages). There are no problems with either of these.</p>
<p>Furthermore, to say that a theoretical and to some extent arbitrary prediction by Austrian School economists is more accurate than actual data, which describes what actually happened, is a bit of a stretch.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Well, they might have had jobs but not a decent job in the US. It's beside the point. The point is that these people want to enter the US and you want to use violence upon these people.</p>
<p>Also you managed to contradict yourself one sentence apart (the bolded area). The fact remains: you want to use violence upon nonviolent people.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I'd like you to find a quote that even implies I would use violence against these innocent people. I have never said "I will summarily execute all illegal immigrants." It's is absolutely ridiculous to claim that I would use violence against illegal immigrants who have done nothing wrong (except crossing the border), and your statement has no backing. Sorry for being rude, but your statement was actually offensive. As for that supposed contradiction, it only means that I am against illegal immigration occurring, but I don't see it fit to spend money trying to enforce the law beyond some minor preventative measures because it is not an important issue. There's nothing contradictory about that.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Furthermore, you keep regarding minimum wage as a floor when it is really a barrier many immigrants have to pass to be able to get a job. It is not your choice to say who can form a contract or who cannot.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So, you're trying to argue that the government cannot regulate any contracts? It is more important that we benefit our workers than illegal immigrants. Now, if there were some magical panacea that could make every happy, that would be great. But our first priority is documented workers legally inside the country.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Do we really have to see another Soviet-like collapse before you realize that socialism fundamentally is insolvent?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>America is not the Soviet Union, and there is no reason to believe that our socialized internal improvements and education (gosh, what a concept!) will collapse, as long as no more neo-cons come to power and we can shrink the military-industrial complex. Also, I am not a true socialist (despite my username), so don't even try to attack me by attacking communism.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
In any case, you are redirecting the violence upon immigrants unto all taxpayers. Taxes are extracted by force. They were never voluntarily agreed upon.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Yeah, because when Uncle Billy says "Gosh darn it, tax season again," the CIA takes him away. Taxes are part of an agreement between the people and the government, are you are not required to participate in that agreement if you don't live in the country. You agree upon taxes through your representatives to Congress. The easy solution to not paying as much: move to a country with lower taxes. I'm not sure what you mean by violence, but this sure isn't it.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Escaping from a jail is a non-violent action. If a gang takes over your neighborhood and says X is a bad action and we will shoot you if you do X, is that ethical? The law is essentially a dictum from a gang saying X is a bad action and we will shoot you if you do X.</p>
<p>Also, would you say the same thing to a person in a gang-controlled city? "Too bad you got shot for doing X, you should have moved to another city where the gang is called a government and X is also bad".</p>
<p>The law is not a mutually agreed upon contract.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>Well, if the manager is allowed to escape from jail (no disciplinary action taken whatsoever, the guards just watch him run off), who's going to stop others from doing so. It would be an unjust double-standard to allow him to run off, but stop another guy and say, "No, sorry, you and that guy are under different rules."</p>
<p>You misrepresent the law as designed to constrain people. In reality, it is designed to protect their rights, and only becomes detrimental when the trade-off isn't worth it (fewer rights after than before). While the manager isn't particularly deadly, it only takes a simple stretch of the mind to argue, "Hey, if this guy is above the law, why should this other prisoner be able to run away?" Then, once the violent criminals get out, our rights will be infringed upon. If you do not like a rule, you tolerate them because of the benefits of the other rules, you protest them (in a legal way), or you leave. It's that simple. I'm sure that if everyone hates taxes as much as you do, they'll flock to your banner.</p>
<p>And in this case, X is bad. Running away from jail was not banned arbitrarily.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
ABCT does not solely apply to fiat currency mechanisms. It refers to any case where the currency is not determined by the market.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<ol>
<li>The Wikipedia article said it is used only under fiat monetary systems, so perhaps you needed a better source.</li>
<li>For stretches of time (1810-1825, 1845-1860, 1870-1910), the currency was hardly affected at all by central banks. However, there were still economic downturns during this time. (The period 1870-1910 may seem to be relatively panic-free, but that's only because of technological advances, most of which were largely independent of the actions of the major businessmen of the day, although I admit that they did sometimes implement useful policies to reduce waste. More technology, more efficiency, more productivity, more real wealth.)</li>
</ol>
<p>
[QUOTE]
These currencies were still by and large affected greatly by central banks throughout American history. For two examples of central control causing massive simultaneous errors, refer to the panics of 1837, 1873 and 1893.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>About the Panic of 1837, I despise Jackson and his policies anyway. He had no idea what he was doing. Instead of "nudging" the economy in the right direction, he violently bludgeoned it with the Specie Circular. Such a blatantly stupid move can't be compared to the wise and gradual use of monetary policy to prevent crashes and speculation.</p>
<p>As for the Panic of 1893, it was caused by overexpansion of railroads and shaky financing due to speculation. While the specie shortage bank runs were a part of the problem, they were caused by the instability of the railroads. No central banking system played a very large part in compounding the problem through its own actions. In reality, the simultaneous errors occurred before federal control stepped in. These errors were caused by trained capitalists.</p>
<p>For the Panic of 1873, I admit that Grant played a large part in it. However, he was another one of those presidents who had no idea what he was doing. He also did not cause the problem; he only helped to compound it.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
The contraction was a corrective measure to the previous inflationary period. But neither massive inflationary periods, nor massive contractionary periods are symptoms of markets. These are symptoms of central control. The market corrects itself in small steps. When a guy opens up a booger taco stand, he ends up bankrupt. This does not really effect the country. But when everybody and their neighbor starts making booger tacos (or getting subsidies to grow one specific crop, etc.), these errors add up to a complete disaster. Capitalism corrects these entrepreneurial errors, whether they be caused by individuals or large groups of people. It is a healthy thing to happen to individuals since allocations of capital are moved to productive uses. When it happens to an entire industry, it is also healthy BUT it causes things like depressions and panics.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So, the government caused the speculation, gold discoveries, embezzlement, and fall of grain prices that led to the Panic of 1857? These were all caused by trained entrepreneurs, and although they were not all mistakes, most of them were good examples or entrepreneurs making mistakes in clusters with little federal intervention. The Panic of 1893 is another example of this. These cannot be "blamed" upon the entrepreneurs, because it can be predicted and expected from the laws of supply and demand, but they were not caused by the government. In fact, with the exception of the Panics of 1837 and 1841, both caused Jackson's policies, government policies rarely caused downturns. Rather, if they were involved at all, they mostly just compounded existing problems.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
I never said I distrust psychology or social sciences. I distrust when people try to model social sciences with statistics. There is a large area of subjectivity which is completely ignored in these decisions which are modeled.
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>So what else is there to back up the social sciences but data? Abstract fabrications? I suppose those could convey subjectivity better, but they wouldn't be useful at all. Statistics are definitely among the best ways to back up theories in the social sciences, and sometimes even in the lab sciences (biology, statistical mechanics). The approaches to psychology that don't rely on statistical data are psychodynamics and the humanistic approach, both of which are often considered at least partially pseudoscientific (although I must admit I'm leaning a bit towards humanism). You spoke of using statistics in sociology yourself when you described an experiment to place babies in a good, bad, or neutral environment and measure violent crime rates.</p>
<p>
[QUOTE]
Yes, you desired it. Your arm is not autonomous. Do I really have to go over self-ownership?
[/QUOTE]
</p>
<p>I thought you were the one who was saying that you can't argue with someone over whether they like Coke.</p>
<p>Yes, I control my arm. I fully acknowledge it. However, that still is not proof that I have any desire to do so. Considering that I do it completely out of habit, I think I have reason to conclude that I have no interest in or desire to open a door for someone I expect never to meet ever again.</p>
<p>There are definately some common morals/ethics/standards that everyone does (or should) obey, but for the most part I think they're personal.</p>
<p>
[quote]
posts 101 & 115
if someone opens a door only because they fear not doing what is socially acceptable, he is not good but obedient.</p>
<p>face it. in your world view, in order to be consistent, only a weak specimen would open the door for anyone other than those from whom one may receive some reward/advantage.
logically, in your world view, you should slam the door on people - knock them out and then:
1) capture them as a resource
2) eliminate them as a competitor for resources
3) or, as stated, open the door, grovel, and continue to conspire to capture the resources of the stronger party
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I never said that opening a door for someone is good. It can be obedient. Your logic does not make any sense. Why would I want to slam the door on someone? Also capture them? I am against violence of any sort except self-defense and some other circumstances. What do you mean eliminate them as a competitor for resources? This is civilization not Darwinism.</p>
<p>Also, where did this groveling and conspiring come from. Competition is not a zero sum game. If you want to beat someone in business you make your product better or lower prices; you do not capture the resources of a competitor.</p>
<p>I am not saying opening the door for someone is good or bad. It is the same as table manners. People have table manners to be accepted into society. Opening the door for somebody is usually an unconscious act. People do it to be polite. </p>
<p>I think your problem is that you do not understand the other side of the argument.</p>