A Left-Libertarianism-ist Manifesto - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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#14826415
@One Degree

Well to some people it is. But if it's as effective as you say it would be, then the results show that this policy is good for minorities. Furthermore people would eventually realize it doesn't matter. If a really racist business refuses to hire colored people then people could be like "Haha, you may be racist but you're supporting blacks by paying the tax!". The policy itself is easy to understand and is appealing to many people (based on the people I pitched it to) so there shouldn't be a problem.
#14826466
@Oxymandias I'm sorry if my response disappointed. I genuinely found the ideas in that "manifesto" article uninteresting and not terribly inspired. The political perspective of the writer really is ignorant on many levels, and I was honestly unimpressed with it. When I use the word "autism" here I am generally referring to libertarians who have warped views on reality and selfishness that is literally autistic.

I don't know what else you expect. You post a link to something written by someone with very shallow views and political thinking that utterly lacks depth. I've read libertarian material written by Eran here, and some material elsewhere, that, while I don't agree with, at least invites respect because it's thoughtful.
#14826472
@Bulaba Jones

And what is exactly ignorant of the writer in the article outside of just a small unrelated reference? What is so terribly uninspired of the ideas in the article?

I doubt you bothered to read the rest of the article after you reached that point in the introduction or probably skimmed through it (due to it's length) and if you tired to read it fully, it would leave a bad taste in your mouth. However I can make you question that belief by linking you to several different articles that demonstrate a large sense of depth in political thinking and where the things being discussed could be interesting:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i- ... -outgroup/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/17/th ... a-of-rage/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/04/04/th ... -movement/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2016/07/27/po ... tisanship/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/10/16/fi ... icization/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/11/04/et ... arguments/
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/me ... on-moloch/

These articles are all "Eran level" depth, even the article I linked in the OP. It's just that with Eran, you bothered to read his posts because A. you wanted to refute them and B. they are much more smaller than the articles shown above or the article in the OP. Therefore you skimmed article in the OP and came out with a generalized view of the article. Because of this you responded with a very generalized response.

Also you called me autistic simply because I didn't clarify my post.
#14826512
I too find the article in the OP completely uninspiring. First off, it`s so US-centric. Plenty of countries actually do not have minimum wage and uses the welfare system a lot like the "manifesto" would like it to (well, at least rationalizes it along that way). The "manifesto" also stinks of Economic 101-ism, where labor markets behave just the way the market for oranges do.
#14826577
@Happyhippo

1. Only the policy ideas seem US-centric and that's because it was made by a person in the US and most of the audience was in the US. The basic idea of the ideology, the idea of creating socio-economic change gradually through incentives, is universal.

2. Give me an example. Chances are you're talking about basic income which is only a policy that's compatible with the ideology presented in the OP and is not the basic ideas the manifesto is advocating for.

3. Where did he talk about labor markets? There was no mention on the market of labor at all. The entire article is actually just exploring the applications of taxes rather than anything related to labor.

All these are very nitpicked and hold no weight over the ideas of the manifesto and you have not made any attempt to refute the core point of it. Either you have read the article but disagree with and want to find as much bad things in it as possible, or you haven't read the article at all (i.e. the labor markets) and just based your ideas on the posters above.
#14826582
MANIFESTO

I think there is an unwritten rule forbidding the use of more than three smileys in a post, so, here goes.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

If it were allowed, I would use more.


Edited to remove an apostrophe
Last edited by ingliz on 24 Jul 2017 15:26, edited 1 time in total.
#14826595
It was a breezy read.

1. The right/left thing works because it is relative. It always has. I understand why the author thought that this needed to be addressed, but it didn't. Nonetheless, it introduced the tension he was going to address.

2. The BART situation was on the surface logical, but lacked two main points:

A. The New Deal jobs that he compared the BART jobs to were designed to be labour intensive, even if pointless. At the time, it was assumed that one would gain dignity by doing work instead of taking a handout.

B. There is no real mechanism for the government to give $60,000 a year to someone forever. I would contend that this is a problem with capitalism that is not addressed in the author's proposal. He is correct in assuming that we have the resources and ability to make a society like that, but the forces of capitalism make it all but impossible.

3. The stuff about affirmative action was problematic as it assumed affirmative action was a knee-jerk emotional need from squishy people on the left. While there is that element, they're never worth precious much when it comes to the mats. It's the military and giant companies that want affirmative action and go to the Supreme Court to ask for it.

Both the military and big companies see it in their best interests to be able to penetrate into a lot of diverse populations. They have, in their words, also found that it is helpful to have as many diverse viewpoints in the room as possible in order to evaluate effective decisions. This has nothing to do with being fair, but in their minds being efficient. And these are the conditions that always favour affirmative action cases.

In the last big one, the university's commitment to affirmative action was held up for the same reason--that the quality of education increased when people (and we can assume this means white people in this case) were exposed to other people from various different backgrounds and view points.

It is, in essence, still to service the dominant cultural apparatus, despite the fears of white people. However, this does not favour poor white people gunning for a bottom position that may otherwise be given to poor black people gunning for a bottom position. It's the same old story that's been there for hundreds of years in this respect.

Since the author doesn't really acknowledge this part of the issue, for me, it fell flat.
#14826600
@The Immortal Goon

Yay! Actual interesting and well thought out criticism!

I find your criticism to be very unique especially given that you're communist which provides a viewpoint I never even thought of.

How do you think the author could refine his ideas? Let's say that you had to give some form of improvement to the ideology without changing the basic concept. What would this improvement be?
#14826609
@One Degree

Depends on the size and business. If it's a small or new minority business then the tax will not be reversed regardless of the political thoughts of the owners. The goal of the tax is to raise the socio-economic class of minorities by making searching for a job easier and by using the money gained from the tax to rejuvenate poor minority neighborhoods. Reversing the tax on minority businesses will stall that process.

However, large minority-owned corporations that have a history favoring hiring their ethnicity will have the tax reversed. But a clear and thorough investigation is necessary with context being put into place and such a assertion requires a case with the Supreme Court of America. Furthermore I think these sort of cases will be rare. If there is a large rich minority-owned corporation they will probably hire majorities because they are often higher quality workers and a rich minority-owned corporation would want higher quality workers therefore the tax still stands.
#14826627
Oxymandias wrote:@The Immortal Goon

Yay! Actual interesting and well thought out criticism!

I find your criticism to be very unique especially given that you're communist which provides a viewpoint I never even thought of.

How do you think the author could refine his ideas? Let's say that you had to give some form of improvement to the ideology without changing the basic concept. What would this improvement be?


I'd have to think about that, because his discussion was logical if we are to assume that the conditions he lays out are accurate—and they're not necessarily accurate.

I found that kind of interesting as he comes close to touching on that in his initial tear-down of the right/left dynamic, but he fell into a rather common libertarian issue in that capitalism is assumed to be a universal constant and it becomes a question of how much or how little capitalism one hands—which completely flies in the face of virtually everyone that has ever studied capitalism, going back to Adam Smith, who goes to some effort to explain the tension in feudal governments having to succumb to the merchants and traders.

Regardless, if one doesn't take into account the system of capitalism when attempting to revise how it affects people, it becomes difficult to go into detail. I'll dwell on it though.
#14826636
for the government to give $60,000 a year to someone forever.

Increasing public spending increases income, wealth, and consumption demand. Paying $60,000 a year to to someone forever is not as foolish as it looks at first glance. Local economies benefit and the government gets it all back anyway, eventually.

Multiplier effect: a phenomenon whereby a given change in a particular input causes a larger change in an output.

In an economy, there is a circular flow of income and spending. Everything is connected. Money that is earned flows from one person to another, and most of it gets spent again - not just once, but many times. What this means is that small increases in spending from consumers, investment or the government lead to much larger increases in economic output.


:)
#14826643
I do not disagree. That is why I built qualifications into the statement:

TIG wrote:I would contend that this is a problem with capitalism that is not addressed in the author's proposal. He is correct in assuming that we have the resources and ability to make a society like that, but the forces of capitalism make it all but impossible.


1. It was not something that was addressed in the manifesto, the manifesto instead assuming a certain form of universal capitalism.

2. It is, indeed, possible.

3. There are forces at work that make it so extremely difficult that it is unlikely to be adopted under the current form of fiat capitalism in which we operate.
#14826671
@The Immortal Goon

If you like that I can give you an article where he deconstructs the right/left dynamics fully:

http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/09/30/i- ... -outgroup/

The article is titled "I Can Tolerate Anything Except The Outgroup" and it is a perfect example of what I call "post-politicization". Post-politicization isn't an ideology persay, but a point of view, a way to see or interpret political situations or scenarios. It allows you to strip yourself away from the influence of culture and emotion and see situations from not necessarily an objective perspective, but a different more accurate one.

In regards to your second post, I'll have you know that there is an economic theory that takes advantage of fiat capitalism and is implementable. It's called Modern Monetary Theory and it may be just what you're looking for:

http://neweconomicperspectives.org/2013 ... r-mmt.html
#14827030
Oxymandias wrote:@Bulaba Jones

You called me autistic when I said that the Caliph didn't partake in imperialism. I later clarified my point and acknowledged the error before you even responded to me.

And make sure to read the linked articles.


I don't remember doing that, but if I did, I did not call you autistic, but rather, your post or your train of thinking. Calling you autistic is breaking rule 2. I'm guessing you forgot to distinguish between someone insulting a post for being stupid, and being insulted for being stupid. There's a difference.

As I said a bunch of times, I read the "manifesto" which is why I commented. It's poorly-written, naive, and mundane. You seem very upset and defensive.
#14827065
@Bulaba Jones

I am sorry. I didn't mean that you called me autistic but the post autistic. Nonetheless, you do not only use autistic to refer to libertarianism.

I haven't really said anything that may make me sound upset or defensive other than saying that you called me autistic which may be interpreted as such. Throughout the post in which I actually engaged in your criticisms of the article, I was just surprised.

Your criticisms didn't explore the actual idea the manifesto presents. All you did criticize was filler to put something in between the actual content. Furthermore none of the things you claim he said was said. You were putting words in his mouth and when I asked for citation you refused to give me it. Criticizing this article based on one small piece of filler is like judging the Communist Manifesto based on an incorrect piece of grammar. It's blatantly ridiculous and displays a clear lack of thought put into thinking critically about the subject matter.

I gave you the opportunity to actually continue reading the article outside of the introduction however you refuse to. You continue to make false assumptions about the article even now. The biggest of these is your "poorly-written" statement. You give no examples to prove that it is poorly-written at all despite the author holding a PhD in literature and writing and many people praise his articles for their writing. Of course you would know it's well-written if you decided to actually read the goddamn article instead of continuing to throw criticisms in the dark hoping that maybe, just maybe, you could hit the target.

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