Is it actually a good thing to trust the institutions?

[NonZeroSum]

OK, I get it. The moment you try to talk sensically is the moment nobody wants to discuss politics with you any more. Sad, but true.

Escusemoir? Aha, you didn't even respond to me...

[brimstoneSalad]

I am sorry if I went off a bit. I got slightly disappointed when two different people on this forum made a statement contrary to both the common sense and to the scientific consensus (that minimum wage helps the poor) as being somehow self-evident. Try to think with your own head, not the heads of the politicians, people!

Either you are lying, or your English is not adequate enough to participate in this forum.

I don't think anybody here supports minimum wage laws as they are, and nobody has implied that they do. EquALLity and I have actually discussed this in the past (http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=17&t=979&start=470#p23886).

EquALLity has only said it doesn't make it illegal for a business to hire somebody who can't earn them minimum wage. Most businesses ultimately do this, and rely on training the person until they can, and make up for it later.
There is an alternate means to train workers, it's called internship, or even offering a class which charges money. An internship just can't be a profit maker for a company, because that's called slavery.
There are also some special programs for the physically and intellectually disabled to allow them to earn sub-minimum-wage in some places.

I think we all (including NonZeroSum) support basic income "negative income tax" and an abolition of minimum wage so people can work together more organically and build local economies and domestic product on their own without ill-conceived government oversight to mandate a certain payment for a certain number of hours regardless of the value of money and labor in that community, as well as so people who are unable to work well can still contribute and earn something (even a couple dollars an hour) which gives them drive and purpose (to be supplemented by adequate welfare and basic free healthcare for all).

You're assuming a lot of things about what we believe, when we agree with almost every point of consensus you linked to and never indicated otherwise.
I somewhat disagree with a couple of those points, but my disagreement doesn't have much to do with the economics (e.g. ethanol subsidies).

[brimstoneSalad]

OK, I get it. The moment you try to talk sensically is the moment nobody wants to discuss politics with you any more. Sad, but true.

Escusemoir? Aha, you didn't even respond to me...

Correct.

Teo, you need to respond to NonZeroSum's post. Stop being a drama queen. If you can't pay others the basic courtesy to read and respond to their arguments, why do you expect it to be paid to you?

[EquALLity]

OK, I get it. The moment you try to talk sensically is the moment nobody wants to discuss politics with you any more. Sad, but true.

Patience.

This is more of a word game than anything else. How do you define mentally ill behaviour? As not normal? Murder isn't normal, most of the people don't murder. As irrational? It's hard to imagine a situation when murder would be rational. As bringing personal suffering? Murdering someone brings you a lot of personal suffering. It's hard to imagine a situation in which the murder wouldn't fulfill all the criteria for mentally ill behaviour.

No, the criteria for what constitutes a mental illness is determined by psychologists/psychiatrists, not you or me or anyone besides an expert.
You can't say that everyone who commits murder is mentally ill. There are people who don't value other peoples' lives and murder them who aren't mentally ill.

Why do you keep ignoring the evidence that the laws don't help? Claims disproven long ago (like that omega-3 helps with heart disease) continue to be perpetuated by the advertisers. And again, watch the Bite Size Vegan videos on animal testing. If you invented penicillin these days, you would be banned.

What evidence that the laws don't help?

Every person in society not always following the law doesn't mean the law doesn't help. Without the law, advertising would be far more deceptive than it is today, because companies could literally say whatever they want. Just because they still get away with deception doesn't mean the law hasn't and doesn't have more potential to reduce deception. It does, or companies would say whatever they want.

And if an employee doesn't make him that much money, he can't pay him or he would be losing money.

Raising the minimum wage is controversial. You weren't describing the minimum wage correctly, you were just stating your opinion about it.

It's so sad that you've heard only political propaganda and not the mainstream economics.
You have to do your own research on-line. What politicians say make the economists' head spinn.

I haven't stated my view about the minimum wage.

I don't listen to politicians, and almost everything in American politics is corrupt. I don't agree with you because free market capitalism with no regulation has been shown not to work, which is why the United States abandoned it, and because government has been shown to bring stability and order to society.
Just because a system isn't without flaws doesn't mean it isn't the best system we have.

The vast majority of the professional economists knew that Obamacare would fail. They just weren't covered by the media. Mainstream politics and the mainstream economics are almost in complete opposition.
Near the end of the Wikipedia article on economics there is a table about what the economists have reached a consensus about. Look at it, just to get a general idea. It's so sad just how distorted picture the media portray us.

Obamacare is controversial, it's not something everyone believes has failed. Obamacare has insured over 20 million people in the United States who weren't insured before, but it also has many problems.

Republican politicians have been against Obamacare for a very long time, and are currently in the process of replacing it with a bill that would throw millions of people off of healthcare. It's not something that all politicians agree on.

I asked: if the employers paying the employee's health care with a money that would otherwise be a part of the employee's wage was a good thing, why would you need a law forcing the employers to do that? Wouldn't it be better if people could choose what to do with the money they made? Would you try to solve the problem of homelessness by forcing the employers to pay for the houses to be built?

Yes. I'm saying that just because something is in a law doesn't mean it's not a good thing necessarily. Just because you need a law to enforce something doesn't mean that thing is bad. For example, like I mentioned, stopping murder is good, but you need the law to do that.

I haven't really seen evidence that justice systems solve the problems of violence, and I have seen a lot of evidence that they actually cause violence (my own experience). A right analogy to a justice system may be this: trying to use a disassembler to debug a remote server (so that it is costly to access relevant information) you know very little about how it works. Theoretically, you could solve the problem. But you are way more likely to misdiagnose it and make things worse.

The justice system puts people in prison who commit acts of violence, removing them from society and preventing them from killing more people.

There are many flaws with the justice system - some innocent people are put in jail, prisons have a lot of abuse, sentencing to too harsh, corruption, racism, etc. etc. but the justice system, overall, makes society more safe by putting away violent people.

Everything in life has flaws. Phones don't have infinite amounts of battery, and their screens break. Lamp lights short out and break. Glasses get cloudy. But without those things, our lives would be harder. Just because something isn't perfect doesn't mean it isn't important.

Why would anybody do that? How would he gain acceptance from enough people? Lenin and Mussolini gained acceptance because people were unsatisfied with the contemporary government (regardless of whether it was actually responsible for what it was blamed), they wouldn't have been supported if there wasn't a bad government already. When Hitler became a dictator, there was already a law making it possible for a person to become a dictator, government actually helped him do that. It's hard to imagine someone becoming a dictator without there being a previous government.

Yes, Lenin and Mussolini gained acceptance because people were upset with government. But mainly, they just wanted food. Lenin's phrase was "peace, land, and bread". Whenever people are starving and suffering, if someone comes and says they will fix that, the people rally around and support that person. If there is tremendous suffering, people will turn to a dictator.

Yes, that's correct. Otto Von Bismarck's law that enabled one person to become a dictator was used by Adolf Hitler. However, the whole reason he came into power in the first place was because the people were suffering, just like with Mussolini and Lenin.

[EquALLity]

I think we all (including NonZeroSum) support basic income "negative income tax" and an abolition of minimum wage so people can work together more organically and build local economies and domestic product on their own without ill-conceived government oversight to mandate a certain payment for a certain number of hours regardless of the value of money and labor in that community, as well as so people who are unable to work well can still contribute and earn something (even a couple dollars an hour) which gives them drive and purpose (to be supplemented by adequate welfare and basic free healthcare for all).

There are a lot of different views on the forum. I'm sure there are some people who want to abolish the minimum wage, some people who want it to remain, and some people who want it to be raised. It's a complicated issue.

If the minimum wage is abolished, doesn't that enable near slavery?
If it's lowered, then people make less money.
If it stays the way it is... there are a lot of problems in the economy right now, so that can't be good.
If it's raised, then that might just drive up prices to compensate and it won't have an impact.

[brimstoneSalad]

There are a lot of different views on the forum. I'm sure there are some people who want to abolish the minimum wage, some people who want it to remain, and some people who want it to be raised. It's a complicated issue.

I just meant the people replying to him in this thread, who he represented as disagreeing with the consensus of economists on the problems of minimum wage.

If the minimum wage is abolished, doesn't that enable near slavery?

Not in itself. Slavery is more about lack of choice than about wage.
If I force you to work for $100 an hour, you're still a slave.

I believe the Affordable Care Act abolished more slavery than any contemporary law; since many people got health care through their employers and had preexisting conditions, they were often unable to quit or change jobs, and were terrified of being fired or laid off because their lives were literally on the line there.

Doesn't matter how much or how little you make (even volunteers working for free are not slaves if they have the option not to), what matters is choice. Most slaves today are immigrants whose passports have been taken, or have been told lies and threatened with deportation to force them into work. Sometimes paid very little, sometimes not paid at all. It just so happens that slaves are usually underpaid, because they CAN be, but that's not what makes a slave. Minimum wage arguably creates more slaves by incentivizing threats when people can't afford to hire somebody legally.

Interns are often slaves, when they work for free for false promises of a future job. Slavery can come from trickery too, when people are forced to work under false pretenses by being intentionally denied information that (with informed consent) might cause them to choose to do something else.

Slavery is a complex issue which usually results in the slave getting low nor no wage (not always, as in a healthcare trap), but ultimately stems from lack of choice.

If it's lowered, then people make less money.

Maybe, but products and services also become cheaper (the same way raising it makes them more expensive). The question isn't income, but purchasing power parity, and It's not clear how much minimum wage changes affect this.
Of course, this is why we need something like basic income, so nobody falls through the cracks and people have more ability to better themselves even if that means being introduced to work at $1 an hour so they can learn.

[teo123]

Patience.

OK, I am sorry.

There are people who don't value other peoples' lives and murder them who aren't mentally ill.

That's the picture the criminalistic series portray to us. The real question is: does this happen enough often that it's worth doing something about it? Well, I don't think so. I have talked to some murderers, and the story is almost always something like this: "I got drunk and did things I wouldn't even think of doing if I wasn't drunk. When I realized what I had done, I felt terrible."
And I personally know one old woman who unintentionally killed someone and was put in prison, despite being so mentally ill that she was constantly disoriented and didn't even know she was in prison.
I know only one person who killed intentionally, and that person killed an officer of "socijalna skrb". And, trust me, I understand him. "Socijalna skrb" is an institution that's supposed to help the poor and end the family violence, but they cause so much psychological trauma everywhere they intervene. That murder wouldn't have happened if there wasn't a government.

What evidence that the laws don't help?

That people are worse off if they follow some laws, like the laws that mandate animal testing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xFx3vHOkHRE

Raising the minimum wage is controversial. You weren't describing the minimum wage correctly, you were just stating your opinion about it.

My point was: if politicians cared about the poor, they could simply give them money, they certainly wouldn't pass a law that effectively prevents the poorest from getting a job.

I don't agree with you because free market capitalism with no regulation has been shown not to work, which is why the United States abandoned it, and because government has been shown to bring stability and order to society.

Substantial failures of the free markets appear to be related to the phenomenon of the radical mistranslation. It's easy for us to imagine that a loanword actually means "I don't know." in the donor language, yet there are very few alleged cases of that, and all of them, on closer examination, turn out to be myths. The same goes for the alleged substantial failures of the free market.

Obamacare is controversial, it's not something everyone believes has failed.

There are sill people in Croatia who believe communism was a good thing. The question is: has the support for Obamacare been drastically lower since it was implemented? The answer is clearly: yes.

Obamacare has insured over 20 million people in the United States who weren't insured before, but it also has many problems.

That's just simply not true. The number of people who were actually uninsured is by orders of magnitude lower than what was commonly cited.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UcSl-HYjnz8

The justice system, overall, makes society more safe by putting away violent people.

What's your evidence of that? My experience has taught me exactly the opposite.

Yes, Lenin and Mussolini gained acceptance because people were upset with government. But mainly, they just wanted food. Lenin's phrase was "peace, land, and bread". Whenever people are starving and suffering, if someone comes and says they will fix that, the people rally around and support that person. If there is tremendous suffering, people will turn to a dictator.
Yes, that's correct. Otto Von Bismarck's law that enabled one person to become a dictator was used by Adolf Hitler. However, the whole reason he came into power in the first place was because the people were suffering, just like with Mussolini and Lenin.

Correct me if I am wrong, but the people in Germany were suffering because of the inflation caused primarily by the German government printing too much money.
Can you point me to an actual dictatorship arising from anarchy in recent history?

[teo123]

How do people live knowing their political ideology is based on a lie?

[NonZeroSum]

How do people live knowing their political ideology is based on a lie?

This is the extent to which you've still not responded to my critique of your political ideology, you also need to reply to brimstoneSalad's summation of the conversation on welfare economics above.



_________________ Process _______________________

Teo I suggest you get specific if you want to engage better and foster good faith in your discussion partner, think about what question you're asking and what premises you want addressed, to either have accepted or discredited. Here are two interpretations and a third subject ranging in scale from hardest to easiest to discuss without getting lost down rabbit holes.

I'd encourage you to pick one and stick to it before digging yourself in any deeper with easily refutable extreme positions with disastrous consequences and no time frame, should I expect the purge ideally tomorrow?

Lots of grand claims and assertions, and refuses to provide evidence.

I think I am experiencing a bit of political discrimination here. Political discrimination is by far the strongest form of discrimination today, yet people rarely talk about it.

I came on the forum announcing myself as grounded in anarchist philosophy and wanting pragmatic libertarian socialist policies instituted, and was given a fair rap - http://philosophicalvegan.com/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=2944

If you think you are being treated unfairly, explain how and we can only try to do better.

OK, I might have exadurated. But Brimstone did make extraordinary claims (that without laws people will be going around shooting each other), and when I asked for evidence, he said he'd ban me.

This is a drastic misrepresentation Teo, stop lying.

________________________ Option 1 ___________________________

All institutions should be gotten rid of, too much power concentrated in too few, the only authority should be the capacity to inspire trust etc. etc.

This is highly speculative and nigh impossible to defend, your only hope is pointing at real laissez-faire capitalist leaning policies and their outcomes to convince us of our misplaced faith in institutions. I've argued against single issue economic pragmatism (market fundamentalism) for being too close minded, and the need to factor in the interests of all historical intersections to squash those memetic biases handed down from generation to generation. Just looking at the tinder-box of London right now after the fires, with so much talk of more riots, the resources it takes to provide everyone including first-generation immigrants a safe home on arrival might not be strictly practical and only speculatively costed for in the long-term. But it is incredibly important to stop pursuing policies that only put further divides between communities like prettifying buildings rather than fire safety, so new housing projects, convincing empty property owners to stop sitting on their derelict houses accruing property value, etc.

---------------------------------------

Regulation

Maybe not all regulation. But let's do a little thought experiment. Suppose there is a scarcity of salt in some country. Now, a stranger comes and tries to sell salt. But that salt contains less iodine than government regulations prescribe. Do those regulations then do more good or harm?
Now, it's possible that FDA is doing that with drugs.
Brimstonesalad says that we need to empower FDA to end pseudoscience in medicine, but I think that's a violation of free speech.
Furthermore, what when politicians don't do what they promise? If homeopaths should be punished, so should they.

Is what's at the root of your distaste with regulation is you dislike national regulations because they typify a negative nonzerosum game between countries? That when two countries are protectionist over their markets, they both lose out? I agree to an extent but the answer isn't throwing hard fought for health and safety protections out the window as EquALLity showed, and it's not entering into international trade agreements that allow companies to sue the tax payer if those countries don't relax their laws and they want to do something illegal but are stopped, claiming it's anti-competitive when they're not allowed to do terrible environmental damage. If you don't like monopolies but you want economic liberty you should give this a read:

https://c4ss.org/content/4043
http://radgeek.com/gt/2011/10/Markets-Not-Capitalism-2011-Chartier-and-Johnson.pdf

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Welfare

Now, most of the welfare in mainstream politics appears to be a scam. You know, like laws that tell the unemployed "If you can't make your employer 7$/h, you mustn't apply for a job." or that tell the employers "You must take away x$ every month from the wages of your employees and give them to the ensurance companies." Brimstone thinks that we should do scientific experiments on small towns to determine what's the best welfare system, but I think that's unethical.

That's not really an argument against welfare economics, that's an anecdote about how the system might not be working very well in your area, you haven't given me enough information to comment. What is your time-frame? If welfare ended tomorrow there would be civil war, do you like that idea because you think abolitionism is the fastest way of bringing about liberty?

I believe in universal basic income to give people the time to follow their interests in study, it would bring into focus what work is most useful and allow community councils to concentrate resources on certain industries, once slave wage labour had been outcompeted, tax could return to a community level mutual aid and large populations would gather around successful industries with good returns.

Recommended reading: Reclaiming Work: Beyond the Wage-Based Society by Andre Gorz

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Public education

Well, there isn't much evidence that it increases literacy, so why bother forcing children to go to public schools?

Parents send their kids to public schools because they don't have the time or capability to teach their kids everything themselves, it's neglectful not to do so in such a case, that's why they're forced or social services intervenes. In Sweden most kids don't go to school until they're 7 years old because they can trust parents to teach them basic arithmetic and language faster 1 to 1 than in a big classroom, when they are still learning to become emotionally competent that can be best fostered under the supervision of parents who know them best. Primary age home schooling is quite common in the UK, as long as groups of parents are also letting kids get together and build their communication skills.

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Punishment

I just said that putting murderers in prisons, places from which they return with even more psychological problems, which made them murder in the first place, may be doing more harm than good.
Brimstone says that we need courts to resolve the conflicts between people. But I think judges and lawyers generally (not all of them) have no interests in bringing justice and peace to the society, but that they actually want people to argue because, well, that's how they make money.

Social isolation after a traumatic event is an incredibly necessary event to coming to terms with your part in those actions, sometimes court cases are necessary in beating that into you with hard facts. Waving you're right to have a person forcibly arrested so they can go through that process is noble minded but would be disastrous if instituted nationally right now, but it's something we can work towards by setting up restorative justice groups that can be practiced on a small scale on a voluntary basis.

http://www.thestranger.com/slog/2017/04/05/25059107/why-the-activist-shot-while-protesting-milo-yiannopoulos-doesnt-want-his-attacker-to-go-to-jail
Principles%20of%20Transformative%20Justice%20-%20collectiveliberation.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/Generation5_Principles_of_Transformative_Justice.pdf






________________________ Option 2 ___________________________

A healthy skepticism towards certain types of institutions.

So not wanting to work as a bailiff or for the NSA say, because you can't justify the necessity of some of those jobs being carried out under our current political climate.

Why Shouldn't I Work for the NSA? (Good Will Hunting):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UrOZllbNarw

I hope you'd agree that knowing what you know about how people being free to dress how they like doesn't have to lead to societal collapse; it would be morally reprehensible for you to join the religious police and enforce the law on the hijab. In the same vein that a draft resister would shirk a bad war even if they believed in the necessary preparedness of the military and the good consequences of involvement in previous wars. That is leave the job to someone else who believes in it wholeheartedly. Try to make your people see the ugly effects such a job has on a person.

-----------------------

I'd encourage you to pick one and stick to it before digging yourself in any deeper with easily refutable extreme positions with disastrous consequences and no time frame, should I expect the purge ideally tomorrow?

I'll choose the option #2.

What movement activism do you see for reducing faith in institutions that are endowed with too much political power? I see merit in wildcat unions like the IWW and CGT who are most focused on reclaiming liberties through collective bargaining and public mutual aid groups like SeattleSolidarity that aim to redress the balance of power between landlords and tenants.

Recommended reading: Understanding Social Movements by Greg Martin






________________________ Option 3 ___________________________

The legitimacy and correct usage of the "Invisible hand"

Throwing this in more because you do need to back up your statements with evidence, but it is also an interestingly overused buzzword in ancap circles that could use fleshing out.

I like Chomsky's theory, but I ultimately think it was just another one of Smith's cosmopolitan ideals which I reject.

Noam Chomsky suggests that Smith (and more specifically David Ricardo) sometimes used the phrase to refer to a "home bias" for investing domestically in opposition to offshore outsourcing production and neoliberalism.[24]

Rather interestingly these issues were foreseen by the great founders of modern economics, Adam Smith for example. He recognized and discussed what would happen to Britain if the masters adhered to the rules of sound economics – what's now called neoliberalism. He warned that if British manufacturers, merchants, and investors turned abroad, they might profit but England would suffer. However, he felt that this wouldn't happen because the masters would be guided by a home bias. So as if by an invisible hand England would be spared the ravages of economic rationality. That passage is pretty hard to miss. It's the only occurrence of the famous phrase "invisible hand" in Wealth of Nations, namely in a critique of what we call neoliberalism.[25]

-----------------------

Option 3) The legitimacy and correct usage of the "Invisible hand"

I don't think we can discuss it on forums. Invisible hand, just like the wisdom of the crowd, is a sociological phenomenon that needs to be researched experimentally. Both of them obviously exist, but it's not clear what are their ramifications, where they can be applied and when they can't. Wisdom of the crowd, for instance, obviously doesn't work in politics, it brought Hitler to the power. The same may be true for the invisible hand, but there is disappointingly little experimental research on it (probably because the politics slows the science down). I'll choose the option #2.

It may be difficult, but we can and should talk about the research and it's implications. Classical crowd theory / collective behavior theory has been most useful for understanding historically irrational movements as you said the rise of Hitler, the Nuremberg rallies being a great case study, other examples include panic in the market around financial crisis. For that reason it has gotten a bad rap for being simply the study of mob mentality, but the theory is multilayered and nuanced.

It's not controversial to share a dim view of politics for how the public collectively group around simple conclusions to issues before fully understanding where the issue arises from and what it means to be confronted by those problems. But we know immediate lawlessness would unleash the worst kind of violent collective behaviour as fear and panic spread.

If you have an affinity for what fruits the wisdom of the crowd can produce in ideal circumstances, you should do more reading into Blumer's symbolic interactionism, it's the original developer of collective behavior theory's typology of social movements. I would be happy to have you on my side in debates against the narrow view that resource mobilization theory can adequately account for all peoples needs.

[teo123]

Look, I am not so deep into the social sciences. Can you summarize your key points in the way I can even understand them? I'm not doing that "Well, it doesn't make sense to me, but I guess it would make sense to a scientist." type of thinking again.