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[Gotchaye]

Regardless, this is going way off track even the original sidebar discussion of why what you're advocating is pretty horrible.

If the choice is between doing everything some rich guy wants or living on sub-par farmland in the middle of nowhere, that's a crappy choice. Why on earth should someone who doesn't already own a lot of stuff think that your system sounds like a good idea?

Edit: Sorry for double-post.

 

[pigeon]

Well this assumes that 100% of the land is occupied. The number is like...5-10% currently? Somewhere around that. To think that 100% of the land would be taken by racist farmers is an absurd idea to posit. So it's sort of hard to answer a question that has no basis in reality.

I don't have unlimited capacity to travel. Remember, I have no capital and no income. How far do you think you can walk and still be able to work on a farm enough to get fed, given that you have no other way to get fed? It's definitely possible that all the land within a radius that size is owned by somebody. I'm pretty confident that would be true for where I'm currently sitting. Is your answer "walk until you find somebody you are willing to work for, or die?" Because that's still coercion forcing me to move.

This is not the first discussion along these lines we've had, and your response seems to always be "well, that's an unlikely worst-case scenario." Yeah -- it is. I'm not interested in ideal cases -- ideal cases are definitionally ideal! A society must be measured by how it ministers to the least fortunate people in it. So what happens to people who are discriminated against by all their neighbors? Bias isn't a violation of the non-aggression principle! What happens to people who are born ill or incapable, or whose parents die while they are infants? What happens when people voluntarily decide to not obey your society's rules? And before you mention it, I'm not all that pleased with our current society, either, but I think that a libertarian one is an active step in the wrong direction.

edit: Incidentally, this is the problem with those "mutual aid societies" you mentioned -- limited membership. The Knights of Columbus don't have a lot of time for Hindus and Buddhists.

 

[Kad5]

Actually, it pretty much is. A lot is publicly-owned, but you can't go out and build a house somewhere in Wyoming and then expect to be recognized as the owner of that land. You might say that we should declare what we now consider publicly-owned land to be unowned, but you haven't made this suggestion yet.

Regardless, in a modern economy, if you say that there's a bunch of un-owned land out there that people can come to own by mixing their labor with it, it's a no-brainer for some rich guy to hire a bunch of unemployed people to go out and mix their labor with as much land as possible in the rich guy's name. I'm betting the land would go pretty fast, except for the most useless pieces.

Yes I am arguing that much of what is considered "public land" is more than likely stolen. Also, America was originally owned by communal societies. Colonists ended up coming here and stealing said land some of whom were decently wealthy. So things like that have already happened to an extent. And more often than not they have the support of a government to do these things. Heck they practically subsidize these actions.

Care to give me an example where a person with lots of wealth simply buys a large portion of land at the expense of others all to himself WITHOUT the help of a state entity?

Ok? What would you be arguing?

I'm arguing that THAT is an example of coercion which is arguably the most common in the world. Expanding territories through force. Rich people aren't usually doing these things on their own. They more than likely have a government that helps them do these things through their monopoly.

 

[Gotchaye]

Care to give me an example where a person with lots of wealth simply buys a large portion of land at the expense of others all to himself WITHOUT the help of a state entity?

I'm not sure what this means or why such an example would be relevant.

I'm arguing that THAT is an example of coercion which is arguably the most common in the world. Expanding territories through force. Rich people aren't usually doing these things on their own. They more than likely have a government that helps them do these things through their monopoly.

Sure, but rich people aren't doing these things without force because they'd get lynched if they tried to be huge dicks without having the physical force to put down any resistance. The problem is that your system legitimizes what the rich people are doing, and tells the resistors that they're in the wrong. If everyone follows your rules, the rich won't need the government's help to control everything, because it would be wrong to physically oppose whatever the rich are doing with their own property.

 

[Kad5]

This video addresses questions about things like private law and hopefully addresses the concern of the rich dominating these institutions.

I wish I could keep answering questions but unfortunately I have things to do.

 

[GaimeGuy]

Not exactly. The sources they cite say this:




All the sources also mention the potential problems due to the stimulus, but the fact remains that spending growth under Obama has been quite low.

You can make other claims, if you like; there are plenty of potential ones (such as "Obama would've spent more if Congress hadn't stopped him." Note that "but the stimulus made baseline spending much higher" isn't actually that good--even if we measure from FY 2008, spending increases only amount to 5%). With this particular one, the facts are on Obama's side.

Why in the world is the WaPo "fact checking" article (LOL) starting with fiscal year 2008?

Fiscal year 2008 = October 2007 - September 2008

Fiscal year 2009 = October 2008 - September 2009

Fiscal year 2010 = October 2009 - September 2010


Obama didn't come into office until nearly a third of the way through fiscal year 2009, and the fiscal year 2010 budget, submitted to congress by Obama during his 2nd or 3rd week in office (early February 2009), was actually made by the Bush administration and handed off to the Obama administration for submission, as is the case with every new president's first budget.


The budgets the Obama administration would be responsible for drafting are Fiscal Years 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014 for his first term. 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 for his second term if re-elected. Though he will not submit the 2018 budget, because that will be submitted in February of 2017, a few weeks after Obama's 2nd term would end.

 

[Nicktendo86]

The vast majority of small business owners do not even make 1 million a year, so they wouldn't benefit much from the Romney plan to cut taxes on the million-plus bracket and raise them for the 200k-or-under bracket.

And conversely, they wouldn't be hurt by Obama raising taxes on the million-plus bracket.

I'm not up on American politics but is this really Romney's plan, raise taxes for businesses that make under 200k and cut taxes for those earning over 1 million? How could anyone vote for this clown?