Starseige Tribes prepared me for this. Let the telefrags commence!

Voyage of the Mimi theme song intensifies.

Thank you for taking the time to discuss this with me, I am finding this very enjoyable and educational.

I agree with Friedman in principle, but then I look at Ford and the other car companies with the Pinto and Takara airbags, etc. The cost of paying lawsuits gets factored in and until the cost point breaks over the deaths and injuries are just a cost of doing business. With regulation that actually has teeth and enforcement, just doing the bodies-to-profits calculations becomes an untenable solution and the recalls happen even if they aren’t profitable. I don’t think a private tort system is capable of having the teeth to achieve this in the real world. It is why Libertarianism still has a central government. It will have its inefficiencies, but it’s a right tool for the right job kind of thing.

Same with asbestos, lead, fillers in food, etc. The damages from them are so divorced from the product that many may not know who or what caused it. Lawsuits have a hard time with those kinds of things even if you know exactly which business is the cause. Look at tobacco and leaded gasoline and myriad others where lawsuits failed initially because damage was difficult to prove before the government stepped in. If fossil fuel companies can pay for the science that muddies the water on climate change, what chance does John Doe have doing enough through a lawsuit to stop DuPont from flooding the planet with forever chemicals?

I like where Friedman is coming from, but I hold him at the same level as Marx or any other economic theorist: assuming a spherical cow, at a specific temperature, without friction, and without wind resistance. I like Henry George the same way. That’s why I still claim to be a libertarian (just a left leaning centrist one), because I think Friedman and George are actually the better end result and closer to a workable solution than Marx. Marx was onto something though, and shouldn’t be dismissed outright. I do think we have stuff to learn from all branches of economic theory, and subscribe to a “the truth will be somewhere in the middle” philosophy.

There is some merit to that, and free education has the same issues in other countries besides Germany. My planning process was to treat the 2 year associates degree like we do with high school, no performance testing or path tracking. Everyone is entitled to a high school diploma of they want one, and with an associates degree being the new high school diploma it makes sense to include it.

It is what we as a society have determined makes the bare minimum education standard for then learning the rest on the job. The employment sector has moved this bar from high school graduate to associates degree, and the education system should reflect that.

The complete abolishment of public everything and allowing the market to dictate and provide is great in theory, but the same was Marxist communism is. There are always those that will break the system for personal gain.

There are also efficiencies of scale that business in a healthy, non mono/duopolostic environment can’t take advantage of that the government can. This is why I put education and healthcare under the “provide for the common defense and well-being of the people” that it exists for. This is why we the taxpayers should be paying for education in what may be or appear totally irrelevant: it results in a net gain as far as expenditure across the country as a whole and makes companies better able to train workers on the job. It also allows easier job transitions allowing more economic mobility, and also helps maintains balance of power between the worker and the employer.

In a libertarian ideal the worker is not trapped working the job or for the specific employer because that is the only job they are trained for and where their healthcare comes from. It is a contract of mutual gain. It is unreasonable for a worker to start over from scratch to change jobs if an employer is not maintaining market wages. It also allows a worker to more easily become an entrepreneur and open his own company, as this requires a broader education basis to succeed at than the job he does for another.

Strong but limited regulation is need to keep markets free. Regulations preventing pollution of the environment as a common resource, truth in representation of goods and services, prevention of anticompetitive actions and regulatory capture., etc. Without this markets inevitably fall to monopoly and the system switches from mutualism to parasitism.

There is a careful balance to maintain and government overreach is just as easy in the other direction. This is true is any economic and sociological system though. Perfectly free laze fair markets do not exist the same way perfectly egalitarian communism doesn’t exist above the small commune level and for the same reasons. Or perfect democracy where everything is voted on by everyone and everyone is making fully informed and educated decisions. If none of these are possible in the real world, all we can do is take the best parts and attempt to create the best possible real world results.

You need solid anticorruption laws the same way you need solid antitrust laws and they need to be liberally enforced. The problem is that neither have been since the 70’s. Regulatory capture by big business is a massive problem, and I am not sure if it is possible to 100% defend against.

I self identify libertarian but lean left. I’d argue that while things like funding higher education may currently be regressive, if free education extended from the current cap of 12th grade to encompass at least an associates level degree you would have a lot more lower and working class taking advantage of it and making it less regressive. With the country having jettisoned it’s manufacturing and blue collar industry, I would further argue this is necessary for the country to compete on the international stage.

What do you mean older show, it is part of Cartoon Network’s cartoon cartoons and only started airing when I was in high school.

Oh God… No… It can’t be. The year 2000 was only…

Mr. Stark, I don’t feel so good…

Close, but it’s a threat: You’ll Never Walk Again. They are kneecapping people up in here.

The environmental music just keeps increasing in tempo and I can’t find the next geyser of air bubbles.

Except for Sprite at a McDonalds, because the water purification and soft drink system costs as much as the rest of the store combined.

Are we also going to tolerate the same with Islam and terrorism? POC and safety because “crime statistics”? If those are not acceptable because it’s not anyone’s individual responsibility for others in an involuntarily assigned group, why is this ok?

Damn, only three drinks to slurred? Dad’s a cheap date.

If years of trolley problems have taught me anything, it’s that you can still kill all the pedestrians you want with your train as long as you make the right choices.

The current company that owns the old model installed in your hospital and sells the new version, bought the company that bought the company that made the version you have and can’t update the firmware and code to work on a modern OS because all knowledgeable staff were lost in the buyouts.

The best they can do is sell you the new version that does the same thing your current working version does for $500,000.

Maybe they even have a new ecosystem that they want you to move to, because they don’t make support/subscription revenue with the current stand alone server that moves the image or telemetry results from the machine to the viewing workstations and records database.

I want limited government focused only on common defense, common good, and keeping the markets free. I feel this is best accomplished through a simple and loophole free tax codes that ensures the wealthy pay their fair share and that all wealth levels are engaged with skin in the game. I believe that this should include a land tax, and that a consumption/sales tax works better than income or wealth tax. These taxes should fund a UBI for all and centralized healthcare, replacing the bureaucratic tangle of our various social safety nets and welfare programs. All monopolies, duopolies, and oligarchies need to be crushed to keep markets free, because the invisible hand needs a paired visible hand to prevent regulatory capture by capital. Drugs should be decriminalized, 2nd amendment rights should be respected, reproductive control should be respected, the government has no business in who married who, religion should be kept to one’s self, and environmental regulation should just ensure clean water, clean air, and long term watershed protection. The market should drive pretty much everything else, with the understanding that unlimited growth is as bullshit as assuming a frictionless sphere in physics. All of these “socialist” programs actually result in functional limited government and maximum individual freedom. It’s not a communist utopia, but I consider it functional Utilitarian Georgist Libertarianism.

First, your username finally clicked and I feel slow for missing it for so long. I actually love it.

Nextly, to also be fair, the existence of a difference between private and personal property isn’t widely known, and China’s implementations of these concepts are even less well known unless someone has been more than toes deep into communist/socialist discussion. Even a lot of “communist” posters don’t have a good grasp on it and can’t really articulate the original intent behind “abolish private property”.

I would like to point out that there are currently enough homes in the US for everyone, and far more vacant homes than our entire homeless population right now. We have major density problems and collusery artificial scarcity that has long crossed over into being illegal and immoral, so we need to be building homes on the scale we did in the post war period. Houses should be much further down the commodity end of the commodity/investment scale, but until we reach a true post scarcity environment (Star Trek levels of post scarcity), I don’t foresee full decommoditization of housing working sustainably.

Lastly, while the communist state really isn’t coming for your toothbrush, obstensively communist countries have overshot going after the landlords and replaced most residential personal property with government landlords. Soviet khrushchevka blocks are a trope for a reason, even if overused.

And thank you for the actual engagement and conversation on this, I appreciate your insights.

Not to be pedantic, but you did write just the broader enforcement of property rights and not private property rights, and I approached it from that broader perspective. Under your clarification, your house does not cease to be your personal property when you leave it for work, but only if the government uses their monopoly of violence to enforce it. And yes, it was a stretch of rhetoric, but not made dishonestly.

The concern is that under this ideal scenario, what happens if you leave you house for a longer term? How does this take temporary moving into account? Examples: I get temporarily transferred for a year to a new city by my job and I fully intend to return to my home after this assignment. Rental homes/apartments aren’t a thing, so I must either buy a dwelling there for a year, or stay in a hotel for a year. If I buy a dwelling, I now own two properties as long as I can afford to pay both mortgages. More likely, I am forced to sell my long term home because I cannot rent it out for that year I am gone. If I do keep it, can I own two separate pieces of personal property or does one become private property because it is not in habitation? I have deprived someone of buying one of them by owning both, and ownership of empty dwellings is usually complained about just as much as renting them. Will my personal property rights be enforced on my vacant home for that year? Should the government allow someone to move in and use my house for that year without my permission or compensation, and only resume enforcing my rights when I move back in? Am I forced to sell and hope that I can rebuy my home when I return? A similar dwelling in an adjacent area may not factor against the sentimental value of a family or generational home. Are any of these parts different if I become temporarily disabled and move in to another person’s home for care. What about a year in the hospital or rehabilitation facility? I don’t think any of these concerns are all that absurd, even if they would affect a small percentage of the population.

You were also seemingly arguing that allowing non-residential private property rights would/should still be enforced so that the capitalist class gets to keep commercial property, unless you are classifying personal, private, and capital property as three distinct categories. Since generally the argument is that private residential property is being used as a rung of capital, I was viewing these as similar enough to be lumped together. It does seem that maybe you were hinting at this being a first step, keep the capital class from revolting while we take out the rentier class, and then move on the remaining private property in swallowable chunks as power is consolidated, which is another reason to view it at a somewhat extreme angle.

Why would anyone pay property tax if property rights stop being enforced? Unless you are actually just giving only the government property rights, allowing the writing and enforcement of evictions, which just makes the government the sole owner of all land the thus the new landlord. Even then, why pay tax when I can just go squat in anyone’s house or building while they aren’t home and it comes down to whoever is stronger getting to stay. Also no point paying tax if someone can just come take it from me. Unless you mean the police actually will enforce property rights for some people but just not others, which just means only those who can afford to employ the police have secure property while the poors just get to duke it out. Unless what you are actually saying is only don’t enforce property rights on secondary building ownership, and then only if that secondary building is not owned by a business that is not providing residential living space. Or are we also breaking up all multi-locatiln businesses the same way?

If everyone risks losing their home every time they leave for work or to get groceries, and only the strongest get to keep the best shelters, the social compact is broken and forming warring territorial clans and insular communities is the end result. Property rights are kind of a keystone for a functional society operating at a size larger than a rural village. It would cause less damage to just make owning more than a single family dwelling illegal, and force everyone to acquire a mortgage to wherever they currently live. This may partially lock your population to wherever they happen to live without finding someone to swap similarly valued dwelling units wherever you want to move to, but there are ways to lessen that impact. Alternatively, the government just seizes all property and doles it out according to whatever the government’s desires are for an area.

Ah, yes, I understand. I did sadly expect there to be nothing articulable backing up this nebulous land back idea beyond apparently a general “US (or maybe just people of European descent in general) bad, and so we must somehow undo centuries of colonization by just giving some undefined land back to undefined people, which is totally possible because sovereign countries voluntarily give up their territory all the time”. I thank you for the enlightening discourse on this topic.

Not sure where you get genocide denial out of what amounts to “humans have been genociding each other since the Homo genus common ancestor split off”. I am asking if anyone actually expects any country on earth to decide that decades, or more likely centuries, in their past they conquered the land they now claim from another people group and now we feel bad about what our ancestors did so we are giving the country back to the most direct descendants of that group.

Are there actual expectations that the US is actually going to give everything or anything east of the Mississippi back to the native tribes, and/or Texas back to Mexico? Do we expect Canada to give BC back to their indigenous tribes? Obviously current relations with both groups need to be fixed because there are ongoing issues, nor should we celebrate the atrocities that happened during any of the colonial movements.

The Americas are also different from the colonialization of Africa, Asia, and the Middle East because the colonists moved there and stayed there instead of setting up exploitation of resources to send back, thus allowing “decolonizing” of those places to happen. And then decolonizing caused further problems by the colonizers drawing borders on their way out. This isn’t to advocate that they stayed colonies, nor do I think these places would have peacefully self-assembled into their own countries if Europe had just dropped everything and left. Human nature would have still had different land and resource wars happen as the native populations filled back in the power gaps.

Genocide is still as bad now as it was then, and even less acceptable because of our modern and “enlightened” morals. This applies to all ongoing genocides and ethnic cleansing attempts. I’m saying the cat is out of the bag on this though, and no government realistically fears any land back movement causing them to support any other country’s existence.

Every square inch of land on earth has “changed hands” so to speak, multiple times by multiple peoples, mostly non-peacfully. How far back does a “land back movement” plan to go? The only fair option would be to DNA test bones from before the last glacial maximum and find descendents with the highest genome similarly and reshuffle all existing populations back based on their earliest ancestors. Or move all humans back to Africa and leave the rest of the world to the native wildlife. Or is it just the US and Canada because they were the most recent? Will we include Mexico and make them give the country back to the Aztec, or do they get a pass because Spain isn’t considered as bad as those pesky Brits? Do we try and find populations of tribes conquered and replaced by the Aztec?

Do we have the authority to freeze all national borders as they are right now in perpetuity to preserve national and racial identities? Are you in favor of the world going to war against Russia to prevent colonial genocide against Ukraine? What do we do with the current peoples existing on their lands now? Do we break every country on earth up into ethnic tribal lands, or City-States? European colonialism of Africa and the Americas was broadly terrible at the time with many lasting issues, but it’s not exactly unique in human history, so I am honestly curious what the end goals look like.