[Edric O]

Hey, try to count how many of these things apply to smashthestate's posts!

Philosophy

- In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.
- Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.
- We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.
- Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.
- Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.
- Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.
- Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.
- Magic incantations can overturn society and bring about libertopia. Sovereign citizenry! The 16th Amendment is invalid! States rights!
- Objectivist/Neo-Tech Advantage #69i : The true measure of fully integrated honesty is whether the sucker has opened his wallet. Thus sayeth the Profit Wallace. Zonpower Rules Nerdspace!
- The great Zen riddle of libertarianism: minimal government is necessary and unnecessary. The answer is only to be found by individuals.

Government

- Libertarians invented outrage over government waste, bureaucracy, injustice, etc. Nobody else thinks they are bad, knows they exist, or works to stop them.
- Enlightenment comes only through repetition of the sacred mantra "Government does not work" according to Guru Browne.
- Only government is force, no matter how many Indians were killed by settlers to acquire their property, no matter how many blacks were enslaved and sold by private companies, no matter how many heads of union members are broken by private police.
- Money that government touches spontaneously combusts, destroying the economy. Money retained by individuals grows the economy, even if literally burnt.
- Private education works, public education doesn't. The publicly educated masses that have grown the modern economies of the past 150 years are an illusion.
- Market failures, trusts, and oligopolies are lies spread by the evil economists serving the government as described in the "Protocols of the Elders of Statism".
- Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.
- Paternalism is the worst thing that can be inflicted upon people, as everyone knows that fathers are the most hated and reviled figures in the world.
- Government is like fire, a dangerous servant and a fearsome master. Therefore, we should avoid it entirely, as we do all forms of combustion.

Regulation

- The FDA is solely responsible for any death or sickness where it might have prevented treatment by the latest unproven fad.
- Children, criminals, death cultists, and you all have the same inalienable right to own any weaponry: conventional, chemical, biological, or nuclear.
- All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.
- If you don't have a gun, you are not a libertarian. If you do have a gun, why don't you have even more powerful armament?
- Better to abolish all regulations, consider everything as property, and solve all controversy by civil lawsuit over damages. The US doesn't have enough lawyers, and people who can't afford to invest many thousands of dollars in lawsuits should shut up.

Libertarian Party

- The Libertarian Party is well on its way to dominating the political landscape, judging from its power base of 100+ elected dogcatchers and other important officials after 25 years of effort.
- The "Party of Oxymoron": "Individualists unite!"
- Flip answers are more powerful than the best reasoned arguments, which is why so many libertarians are in important government positions.
- It's time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.
- Libertarianism "rules" Internet political debate the same way US Communism "ruled" pamphleteering.
- No compromise from the "Party of Principle". Justice, happiness, liberty, guns, and other good stuff come only from rigidly adhering to inflexible dogmas.
- Minimal government is whatever we say it is, and we don't agree.
- Government is "moving steadily in a libertarian direction" with every change libertarians approve of; no matter if it takes one step forward and two steps backwards.
- Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It's not supposed to be funny or ironic!

Political Debate Strategy

- Count only the benefits of libertarianism, count only the costs of government.
- Five of a factoid beats a full argument.
- All historical examples are tainted by statism, except when they favor libertarian claims.
- Spiritually baptize the deceased as libertarians because they cannot protest the anachronism: Locke, Smith, Paine, Jefferson, Spooner, etc.
- The most heavily armed libertarian has the biggest dick and thus the best argument.
- The best multi-party democratic republics should be equated to the worst dictatorships for the purposes of denouncing statism. It's only a matter of degree.
- Inviolate private property is the only true measure of freedom. Those without property have the freedom to try to acquire it. If they can't, let them find somebody else's property to complain on.
- Private ownership is the cure for all problems, despite the historical record of privately owned states such as Nazi Germany, Czarist and Stalinist Russia, and Maoist China.
- Require perfection as the only applicable standard to judge government: libertarianism, being imaginary, cannot be fairly judged to have flaws.
- Only libertarian economists' Nobel Prizes count: the other economists and Nobel Prize Committee are mistaken.
- Any exceptional case of private production proves that government ought not to be involved.

[smashthestate]

The funniest thing of all is that objectivist/capitalists/libertarians, for the most part, all agree that Man is naturally a selfish being--and that the majority of his actions are to the benefit of himself.

Then we use this argument to refute the probability that communism can work. So the communists say that man is not inherently selfish, and that they are social animals who really want to cooperate and help eachother above all else (or at least the Anarcho-Communists). The communists who advocate state-enforced cooperation differ in opinion obviously.

But then when the objectivists/capitalists/libertarians advocate freeing Man of bounds, chains, and government regulation/restriction, the communists say that man will naturally form a ruling class and oppress the worker, even though they say Men aren't inherently selfish, and are in fact social creatues.

Riiiiiiiiight.....

Edric O. You are an Anarcho-Communist, correct? They advocate, as an end, a society in which there is no state whatsoever, and that all of the people within this society voluntarily contribute their labor to the common good. However, when we libertarians advocate minimizing the role of the state, you attack us saying that Men will oppress eachother.

Why the double-standard?

For Anarcho-Communism to exist, Man's nature must be social cooperation, not selfishness--this is irrefutable (unless you force cooperatoin by a state aparatus, in which case it is not really Communism).

So let me ask you this. If there was a revolution tomorrow, and the governments of all the countries of the world were dissolved, do you think Man would naturally and voluntarily form a society similar to Anarcho-Communism?

Communism is against man's nature. Capitalism proves this.

[Edric O]

Funny - there I was thinking that this was the satire forum...

But if you insist on starting a serious debate, who am I to argue?

The funniest thing of all is that objectivist/capitalists/libertarians, for the most part, all agree that Man is naturally a selfish being--and that the majority of his actions are to the benefit of himself.

Yes, selfishness is most certainly a part of human nature. Then again, so is murder and the use of force. So, if you're that eager to create an economic system that accomodates every part of human nature, then why don't you legalize murder while you're at it?

Communists do not believe that humans are inherently selfish, nor that they are inherently altruistic. We believe human beings are inherently adaptable and that they have the FREE WILL to make their own choices. Humans are not selfish machines.

Then we use this argument to refute the probability that communism can work.

Communism does not require everyone to be altruistic. It only requires selfish people to be intelligent enough to see that cooperation is in their own self-interest.

But then when the objectivists/capitalists/libertarians advocate freeing Man of bounds, chains, and government regulation/restriction, the communists say that man will naturally form a ruling class and oppress the worker, even though they say Men aren't inherently selfish, and are in fact social creatues.

Wrong once again. If you truly wanted to free Man of ALL bounds, then we would be on the same side. But you only want to free Man of the bounds of government, and keep him a slave to private property.
You would free us from one set of chains and shackle us with another.

At least government is democratic - without it, your perfect capitalist world would be a brutal corporate dictatorship.

Man will only form a ruling class "naturally" if the technology level and the historical circumstances require it - in other words, if Man lives in prehistoric tribes that are at constant war with each other and have just discovered agriculture. A high-tech, global communist society would not require a ruling class.

Edric O. You are an Anarcho-Communist, correct? They advocate, as an end, a society in which there is no state whatsoever, and that all of the people within this society voluntarily contribute their labor to the common good. However, when we libertarians advocate minimizing the role of the state, you attack us saying that Men will oppress eachother.

See above. You advocate minimizing one form of oppression (the government) and maximizing another (private property). In a society where private property exists, a class structure will emerge, and Men will always oppress each other.

Anarcho-Communists advocate, as an end, a society in which there is no state whatsoever, and also no private property. (as opposed to you libertarians, who practically worship private property)

For Anarcho-Communism to exist, Man's nature must be social cooperation, not selfishness--this is irrefutable (unless you force cooperatoin by a state aparatus, in which case it is not really Communism).

Wrong and wrong. First of all, as I said above, Man's only "true nature" is the ability to adapt and the free will to choose between selfishness and altruism, as well as a great number of other things. There are no genes for selfishness or altruism.
Second of all, as I also said above, communism does not require everyone to be altruistic. It only requires selfish people to be intelligent enough to see that cooperation is in their own self-interest.

So let me ask you this. If there was a revolution tomorrow, and the governments of all the countries of the world were dissolved, do you think Man would naturally and voluntarily form a society similar to Anarcho-Communism?

No. I am not an anarchist. I believe a paradigm change of that magnitude requires TIME. That's where the intermediate period known as Socialism comes in. Government needs to be dissolved gradually - and private property needs to be dissolved along with it.

Communism is against man's nature. Capitalism proves this.

Capitalism is against man's nature, because capitalism is an artificial construct. The natural state of Homo Sapiens is communism.

[smashthestate]

Funny - there I was thinking that this was the satire forum...

But if you insist on starting a serious debate, who am I to argue?

You're right, see a new topic I started in the Morals And Ethics forum entitled "The Nature Of Man."