Classical liberalism....

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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Siggon Kristov » Sat Jul 25, 2015 4:57 am

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:And are the short-term solutions to road/bridge issues deliberately to keep money flowing to poor voters to secure their votes? If not, it's not the same as Jamaica's case, or even similar.

So you believe that your government deliberately waste the money in order to prevent itself to have money to help the poor.

It is helping the poor, arguably. The IMF forces us to cut social services, so this is an easier way for the government to help the poor, and it's a more direct way to put money into the hands of the poor so the voters are grateful and their votes are secure.

Arizal1 wrote:I would rather think it is simply because spending in roads is popular and ensure them votes (and helps the economy, if you are keynesian).

Yes, spending on roads helps the economy in Keynesian theory. Do you know why? It's because you pump money into the economy by buying materials from their producers, and paying contractors and workers, who in turn use that money to spend on consumer goods, and all that blah blah. I'm not denying that, however it's not the motorists who vote for the government when the roads are fixed; most voters don't even drive.

You say "spending in roads is popular" but I go further by explaining why spending on road-building is popular. Do you accept my explanation (you didn't give the impression that you did), or do you care to offer a different one? Why leave a blanket statement like "spending in roads is popular" without analysing why it is popular? Fixing roads is popular in Jamaica because it means that contractors and workers are repeatedly getting money from the government. If the government cared about maintaining good roads, they would build more durable ones. They really only patch roads, not build or properly fix them. If they build durable roads, the contractors and workers don't benefit, so they have no reason to vote to keep the party in power, and the other party can just promise them jobs (in road-building) and the other party gets their support in the next election.

Arizal1 wrote:I have a friend which made me recognize that the Chinese system, for example, can be efficient because the factions in the communist party are not openly hostiles toward one another. One of my teacher made me think about this, and yes, system which is too much adversarial can be harmful to the well-being of the State and its people.

But the fact that Canada or the USA have this archaic first past the post system, which encourages a two party system, or so called majoritary governments (for Canada) or unending tenures (for USA) is what make those systems adversarial. (By the way, it is precisely my love of party politic which made me join Particracy.)

I prefer first-past-the-post because the MPs have specific constituencies (and constituents) which they are responsible for. Fidel Castro had praised the constituency-based system (and I couldn't understand why, because I really dislike first-past-the-post for several reasons) in Jamaica, and Cuba's system is constituency-based as well. Proportional representation encourages party rule, and I don't like that unless it's one-party. I don't buy this whole thing that it encourages a two-party system, because Canada has 3 main parties (plus more), the UK has large/strong parties apart from Conservatives and Labour, and some Caribbean countries (like Trinidad & Tobago, or St. Kitts & Nevis) have more than 2 main parties. You can have first-past-the-post with no parties, with 1 party, with 2 parties, or with more than 2 parties. It just becomes problematic when there are parties, because people have a partisan perspective of election results, when first-past-the-post is really about individual representatives being elected separately by the constituents that they represent.

Arizal1 wrote:Now, I don't deny that a communist party can end up looking like a rainbow coalition of different factions, but if you look at China, you see that a communist party can have of its ideology only the name. It is when it abandons the quest of ideological purity that things get better, and they seem to get better by going further away from the most extreme ideas. All "practical" debate end when someone believe his interlocutor is a traitor. If you believe *I* am anthitetical to democracy because of my beliefs, then in my opinion you are not a democrat. And yes, we are turning in round on this matter, so we would be better to drop it.

I still consider myself to be a Democrat. Again, Democracy is not about equality of views or about individual rights, or any of that nonsense. Democracy is a collectivist idea that has attracted the same criticisms in the past as Socialism does today. Do not confuse Democracy with Liberal Democracy, please; that is something which really annoys me.

Arizal1 wrote:I find the disdain you have toward liberals and conservatives troubling. We are mistaken beyond redemption, in your view, and this seems to stem from the idea that you possess the truth.

It's not about possessing the truth; it's about which class each ideology serves.

Arizal1 wrote:At least this is what I can derive from the fact that you are willing (and find it in your best interest) to intimidate people to prevent them from speaking their minds. You could instead try to convince them that they are wrong and, if they don't listen to you, simply ignore them. I would be unable to do such a thing.

Ignore them while they influence other people? I specifically said that I confront the ones who publicly advocate certain things. They aren't wrong about what they think; their ideology works perfectly to do what it is supposed to do, but that is something terrible.

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon wrote:I believe in worker ownership, not state ownership where workers get paid for working for the state. There will be income disparity, but not as bad as people getting 10 times the income of others, or where someone's future is more affected by things that happened before their birth than the things that they choose to do while they are alive.

That's great! So you are for cooperatives? They can already exist in the capitalist system and they are growing (at least in Canada.) Maybe one day this model will supplant the company one, altought company have some advantage for them (stability and simplicity, for example). But I still wish to see them flourish.

Yes, I'm for worker co-operatives.

Arizal1 wrote:I was saying that, as you think liberals do, you put one part of humanity against another part and believe something good would come of that. However, liberal or conservative ideas, and thus political conflicts can come from a diverse society as you are probably envisioning your vibrant communist society.

You said that Marxists may unconsciously do it. In actuality, they openly and deliberately advocate class struggle. I do not consider the bourgeoisie to be a part of "humanity" - they are humans, but "humanity" is a collectivist thing. For the bourgeoisie to exist in the modern Capitalist model, there must be private property rights where the collective is deprived of property so that some individuals may have exclusive access and control of more property than they even use; this is inhumane.

And I did not say that I think that Liberals put one part of humanity against the other. They want society set up in a way where the working class lives peacefully with the bourgeoisie. How else will the bourgeoisie exploit them?
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Arizal1 » Sat Jul 25, 2015 7:03 pm

Sorry, I didn't understand your point about roads. I thought you were saying that spending in the roads was a way to avoid giving money directly to the poors. You were saying that, because of the situation (IMF and the idea that by giving jobs, you are liked), it rather seemed the best way.

As long as the government goal is to be reelected, and not to exploit the poors, I agree with your analysis.

About proportionnal representation, I don't like a system which ties mps to parties, but I think it is possible to have the best of both worlds, as in Baden Wurtemberg.

The FPTP system is broken because mps can be elected with less than 50%+1 of the popular vote. Then, they can make deals with other mps, forming political parties which trump their wills. To me, it is inevitable for a legislature to be divided in cliques, name them parties or factions.The preference of the people must be represented, and it can happen with a better votation system (albeit not perfectly).

Siggon wrote:I still consider myself to be a Democrat. Again, Democracy is not about equality of views or about individual rights, or any of that nonsense.


Democracy is about the people choosing. It cannot choose if you preclude some choices.

Siggon wrote:I do not consider the bourgeoisie to be a part of "humanity" - they are humans, but "humanity" is a collectivist thing. For the bourgeoisie to exist in the modern Capitalist model, there must be private property rights where the collective is deprived of property so that some individuals may have exclusive access and control of more property than they even use; this is inhumane.


Or they have to occupy some roles in the society for which there is a shortage of offer compared to what . And this doesn't at all mean that you can make merely survive the others. There are ways to improve the life of everybody. All is not a zero sum game.

We give value to what we hold dear. Human life is valuable, immensely. When we liberals are saying that "you own yourself", it is not to say that you are a merchandise, but to say that you are more than a simple object : you are worth protecting. And if everyone isn't protected, then we are not in an ideal world and we must strive to make it happen. Those capitalists oppressing people are mistaken, but they are not liberals - not the way I see it.

Or rather, if they really think that way, then I must qualify myself a social-liberal. But even if some liberal thinkers thought (and maybe think) that, it doesn't mean that all the liberal legacy is void.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Siggon Kristov » Sun Jul 26, 2015 1:07 am

Arizal1 wrote:Sorry, I didn't understand your point about roads.

Evidently, because I had to explain it multiple times, using 4 posts. I had to repeat myself. I don't see why it was so difficult to understand from the first time.
Siggon Kristov wrote:
For example, there is the politics of road-building in Jamaica. The government doesn't benefit from having durable roads, or from support from motorists who appreciate fixed roads. The government benefits when it pays people to fix roads, because it gets votes from those people. The government is therefore disinterested in sustainable or long-term development, as it prefers to build roads that easily get damaged so that they can pay people to fix it again. Having durable roads won't help you to win an election in Jamaica, because durable roads mean less jobs.

Some people (the articulate minority, really) complain that the government does not make durable roads. In reality, if the government makes durable roads, it has no reason to keep hiring people to fix it over and over again. It is in the ruling party's interest to make shitty roads that need constant fixing, even if it is more expensive, because it is a way of securing votes. The people who vote the most are the disenfranchised poor and the lower-middle class (i.e. the Black middle class). Most voters don't drive. They don't care about good roads. They want money, and money flows to them whenever there are roads constantly being fixed.

Why is the stadium construction popular? In Jamaica, it would be because contractors and labourers get money, so they would vote for the ruling party in the next election. And are the short-term solutions to road/bridge issues deliberately to keep money flowing to poor voters to secure their votes? If not, it's not the same as Jamaica's case, or even similar.

Fixing roads is popular in Jamaica because it means that contractors and workers are repeatedly getting money from the government. If the government cared about maintaining good roads, they would build more durable ones. They really only patch roads, not build or properly fix them. If they build durable roads, the contractors and workers don't benefit, so they have no reason to vote to keep the party in power, and the other party can just promise them jobs (in road-building) and the other party gets their support in the next election.


Arizal1 wrote:I thought you were saying that spending in the roads was a way to avoid giving money directly to the poors. You were saying that, because of the situation (IMF and the idea that by giving jobs, you are liked), it rather seemed the best way.

Just read the underlined parts of what I quoted from my last 4 posts. If you read my posts properly, you would not have gotten that impression. I had to use 4 posts explaining something so simple. Communicating with you (and other liberals) is a burden.

Arizal1 wrote:As long as the government goal is to be reelected, and not to exploit the poors, I agree with your analysis.

They are doing it to exploit the masses; they are exploiting the masses for their votes so that they can stay in power. That is Populism.

Arizal1 wrote:About proportionnal representation, I don't like a system which ties mps to parties, but I think it is possible to have the best of both worlds, as in Baden Wurtemberg.

The FPTP system is broken because mps can be elected with less than 50%+1 of the popular vote. Then, they can make deals with other mps, forming political parties which trump their wills.

If they were all Independents, it wouldn't look so bad. The reason it looks bad is that we have parties, so people look at the fact that Party A won this many seats with only this little amount of votes, and Party B won this little number of seats while having so many votes. They don't look at it as separate elections. Some countries don't have run-off voting, so they can get stuck with a President with less than 50% of the votes too.

What I should say I prefer - instead of saying "first-past-the-post" - is specifically single-member constituencies. What I heard that Trinidad & Tobago is doing soon (we can double-check with Maxington) is having run-off elections in constituencies where the top candidate doesn't get a majority of votes, but they will retain the single-member constituency system. What I would do is something similar to Cuba, where you would have approval-based voting instead of only being able to select a single candidate; that is where you vote Yes/No for each candidate separately. This is a very simple concept. I hope I don't need to spend 4 posts explaining this to you. It would still be first-past-the-post in how I would want it, because the election would be won by the candidate with the highest approval rating.

Arizal1 wrote:To me, it is inevitable for a legislature to be divided in cliques, name them parties or factions.The preference of the people must be represented, and it can happen with a better votation system (albeit not perfectly).

Well, obviously. What I dislike is a pre-determined division of the MPs, where their loyalty to their party exists before they are even elected. If the cliques are formed after election, that's a different case.

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon wrote:I still consider myself to be a Democrat. Again, Democracy is not about equality of views or about individual rights, or any of that nonsense.

Democracy is about the people choosing. It cannot choose if you preclude some choices.

Democracy is about collective power of the masses, and that can manifest in different ways. Again, it is not limited to (or dependent upon) the existence of elections. There was popular participation in the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of Gairy in Grenada, and mass participation in politics in Cuba and Grenada after their respective revolutions. There was participatory democracy without elections. In those countries, people had a negative and anti-democratic impression of elections, because of the electoral fraud and the pseudo-Democracy that existed under Batista and Gairy.

Democracy is not limited to the existence of some process where people go to ballot boxes to tick something. Simplifying and mechanising Democracy like that shows that you have a very narrow understanding of it. It's through the ballot box that people have given up their power in many instances. Electing a Liberal or Conservative government is one such way in which that can happen. In the 1930s in Germany, it was Nationalists/Fascists. Your understanding of Democracy puts too much weight on elections, an event that happens every few years where people give up their power to a set of politicians.

Elections benefit Populists, not Democrats. Populists say nice meaningless things, give the people hope, and gain their trust; all this is to seek power, but populists really do nothing to give the people true power. Democracy is more than just some nice-looking elections. You can have free and fair elections in a country with high income disparity; it would not be Democracy, because the masses lack economic/material power.

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon wrote:I do not consider the bourgeoisie to be a part of "humanity" - they are humans, but "humanity" is a collectivist thing. For the bourgeoisie to exist in the modern Capitalist model, there must be private property rights where the collective is deprived of property so that some individuals may have exclusive access and control of more property than they even use; this is inhumane.


Or they have to occupy some roles in the society for which there is a shortage of offer compared to what . And this doesn't at all mean that you can make merely survive the others. There are ways to improve the life of everybody. All is not a zero sum game.

Land is zero sum when private property exists.

Arizal1 wrote:We give value to what we hold dear. Human life is valuable, immensely. When we liberals are saying that "you own yourself", it is not to say that you are a merchandise, but to say that you are more than a simple object : you are worth protecting. And if everyone isn't protected, then we are not in an ideal world and we must strive to make it happen. Those capitalists oppressing people are mistaken, but they are not liberals - not the way I see it.

I don't care how you see it; I read some Hayek and some Rawls. If you haven't read Hayek or Rawls, I don't know how you get to determine who is a Liberal or not. Hayek believes in protecting individuals from facing direct/violent coercion from each other. He doesn't mind if someone starves, because it is a part of their freedom to starve, and the state helping that individual is violating that individual's freedom.

In the thread, when you brought up the whole "you own yourself" idea, it was to side-step the whole point I was making about some people lacking property and being disadvantaged. Yay, the whole "you own yourself" thing sounds nice until it doesn't serve much practical purpose. Hayek agrees that each individual owns himself/herself, but does that matter when these individuals have no access to property to benefit from? "Yay, they have no home or food, but they own their bodies!" - Let's be real.

Arizal1 wrote:Or rather, if they really think that way, then I must qualify myself a social-liberal. But even if some liberal thinkers thought (and maybe think) that, it doesn't mean that all the liberal legacy is void.

Even Welfare Liberals and Social-Liberals attract my criticism and strong dislike. If they truly looked out for the interests of the working class, they would not support private property or the market.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Arizal1 » Sun Jul 26, 2015 5:47 am

Well, about the roads, I totally misread and I apologize for that. I found the exact moment when this occured. It is when you said :

And are the short-term solutions to road/bridge issues deliberately to keep money flowing to poor voters to secure their votes? If not, it's not the same as Jamaica's case, or even similar.


The thing is, I agreed with about the reason to build roads and I said it was also happening in my country, a thing you seemed to deny. Then, I read that the reason roads were built was to keep money from flowing to poor voters to secure their vote. Sorry for this misunderstanding.

They are doing it to exploit the masses; they are exploiting the masses for their votes so that they can stay in power. That is Populism.


They are doing it because, like all political parties, indeed all person interested in making changes in their society, they have to have power. Or, more cynically, they simply want power. To me, this is enough as a reason to explain why someone is doing something. I understand however how you can call this exploitation. If those roads weren't build, those voters wouldn't have jobs. So if there are no real welfare State, promises to build roads if the region votes for them are not only incentives. It threatens them to lose their livelihood.

What I should say I prefer - instead of saying "first-past-the-post" - is specifically single-member constituencies.


The concept I like the most currently, and that I think it can be combined with the proportional system quite well, is the preferential vote. It is almost as you described, but instead in it you rate candidates with numbers (1 for the best, 2 for your second choice, and so on). Then if your first choice is the less popular, they look for your second choice and add your vote to his, and so on until a candidate has 50%+1 of the votes.

Well, obviously. What I dislike is a pre-determined division of the MPs, where their loyalty to their party exists before they are even elected. If the cliques are formed after election, that's a different case.


I understand your point. But people who grouped after an election will be together again when the next one comes, and most importantly they will try to reassure themselves of the support of their colleagues. Their individual votes are meaningless if they cannot convince their colleages, which may not think like them in all subjects, to vote with them this time in order for them to vote with them later. And there is born party discipline. Party discipline also serves to give the electors a better idea of what their candidate is likely to support once elected. I believe socialists parties also do that to prevent their members to vote with "the bourgeois".

Democracy is about collective power of the masses, and that can manifest in different ways. Again, it is not limited to (or dependent upon) the existence of elections. There was popular participation in the Cuban Revolution and the overthrow of Gairy in Grenada, and mass participation in politics in Cuba and Grenada after their respective revolutions. There was participatory democracy without elections. In those countries, people had a negative and anti-democratic impression of elections, because of the electoral fraud and the pseudo-Democracy that existed under Batista and Gairy.

Democracy is not limited to the existence of some process where people go to ballot boxes to tick something. Simplifying and mechanising Democracy like that shows that you have a very narrow understanding of it. It's through the ballot box that people have given up their power in many instances. Electing a Liberal or Conservative government is one such way in which that can happen. In the 1930s in Germany, it was Nationalists/Fascists. Your understanding of Democracy puts too much weight on elections, an event that happens every few years where people give up their power to a set of politicians.

Elections benefit Populists, not Democrats. Populists say nice meaningless things, give the people hope, and gain their trust; all this is to seek power, but populists really do nothing to give the people true power. Democracy is more than just some nice-looking elections. You can have free and fair elections in a country with high income disparity; it would not be Democracy, because the masses lack economic/material power.


Of course, democracy can manifest itself in many ways, and it is not voting once in four years. But if the place where the people metaphorically take decisions is the legislature, then free elections are necessary to ensure the people is properly represented in them.

In the 1930s, Hitler came in power in Germany because of many things, but I believe some of this had to do with the political system. The proportional votation system ensured that only the political leaders had something to say in the Reichstag and the president had too much powers. The vote which gave to Hitler the chancellor office has been democratic, but the result hasn't been.

I don't care how you see it; I read some Hayek and some Rawls. If you haven't read Hayek or Rawls, I don't know how you get to determine who is a Liberal or not. Hayek believes in protecting individuals from facing direct/violent coercion from each other. He doesn't mind if someone starves, because it is a part of their freedom to starve, and the state helping that individual is violating that individual's freedom.

In the thread, when you brought up the whole "you own yourself" idea, it was to side-step the whole point I was making about some people lacking property and being disadvantaged. Yay, the whole "you own yourself" thing sounds nice until it doesn't serve much practical purpose. Hayek agrees that each individual owns himself/herself, but does that matter when these individuals have no access to property to benefit from? "Yay, they have no home or food, but they own their bodies!" - Let's be real.


I think I might have tried to much to answer to your distorded vision of liberal thinkers and not enough to defend them. I read Hayek (albeit some time ago) and I didn't understand from what I read that someone life and death wasn't important. Actually, he was advocating a minimum income. Rawls told us about a veil of ignorance in which we were to wish a society for which whichever place where we would land would be good for us. He crafted the difference principle, which meant that inequality in the society had to serve the most needy (because he believed that those inequalities were producing wealth).

If property must be defended and bodies are properties, then those people who don't have an house but happen to have bodies also have to be protected. And protecting them doesn't mean letting them die while "protecting" them from agresions, it also means providing them with the basic needs of life.

Private property and the market can work for the people. They must be harnessed, for sure, but property rights bring stability and the market incentives to improve ourselves. If someone has a minimum income (and housing), then he can have no salary or earn a million per year according to his luck and abilities, but his life will be protected and he will be able to do what he wants with it.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Siggon Kristov » Sun Jul 26, 2015 6:28 am

Arizal1 wrote:Well, about the roads, I totally misread and I apologize for that. I found the exact moment when this occured. It is when you said :
Siggon Kristov wrote:And are the short-term solutions to road/bridge issues deliberately to keep money flowing to poor voters to secure their votes? If not, it's not the same as Jamaica's case, or even similar.

The thing is, I agreed with about the reason to build roads and I said it was also happening in my country, a thing you seemed to deny.

I did not deny that it happened in your country. I said that the political dynamics are different if it is not being done for the same reason that it is being done in Jamaica. I'm focusing on the reason it is done.

And you're still misreading it, based on the utter bullshit you say in the next quote.

Arizal1 wrote:Then, I read that the reason roads were built was to keep money from flowing to poor voters to secure their vote. Sorry for this misunderstanding.

No, you're still not reading properly. Communicating with you is frustrating. The reason the roads are built is to keep money flowing to poor voters, NOT to keep money from flowing to them. This is the 5th time I'm having to explain it, and the 6th time I'm having to point it out.

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:They are doing it to exploit the masses; they are exploiting the masses for their votes so that they can stay in power. That is Populism.

They are doing it because, like all political parties, indeed all person interested in making changes in their society, they have to have power. Or, more cynically, they simply want power. To me, this is enough as a reason to explain why someone is doing something. I understand however how you can call this exploitation. If those roads weren't build, those voters wouldn't have jobs. So if there are no real welfare State, promises to build roads if the region votes for them are not only incentives. It threatens them to lose their livelihood.

This road-building thing is one way in which the government wastes money. If we build durable roads, maybe we would have been slightly closer to being out of our serious debt situation.

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:What I should say I prefer - instead of saying "first-past-the-post" - is specifically single-member constituencies.

The concept I like the most currently, and that I think it can be combined with the proportional system quite well, is the preferential vote. It is almost as you described, but instead in it you rate candidates with numbers (1 for the best, 2 for your second choice, and so on). Then if your first choice is the less popular, they look for your second choice and add your vote to his, and so on until a candidate has 50%+1 of the votes.

I know what you are talking about. It is not almost as I described. It is time-consuming and annoying. When an unpopular candidate is eliminated, his/her votes don't necessarily all go to one candidate, so you have to count the ballots again to allocate the votes to other candidates.

Arizal1 wrote:Of course, democracy can manifest itself in many ways, and it is not voting once in four years. But if the place where the people metaphorically take decisions is the legislature, then free elections are necessary to ensure the people is properly represented in them.

But, you see, I'm not someone who believes so strongly in representative democracy that I assume that every instance of Democracy must function like representative democracy. In the Socalist state I imagine, there will be more consultation with the people and grassroots/community-based committees. There will be representative democracy officially, but it will be more about the democracy than the representatives.

Arizal1 wrote:In the 1930s, Hitler came in power in Germany because of many things, but I believe some of this had to do with the political system. The proportional votation system ensured that only the political leaders had something to say in the Reichstag and the president had too much powers.

1) That's how proportional representation is supposed to work. You are in the parliament as a representative of the party, not the representative of a specific set of identifiable people.
2) Hitler became a strong force in German politics before the President did things in his favour.

Arizal1 wrote:The vote which gave to Hitler the chancellor office has been democratic, but the result hasn't been.

Exactly, so please stop trying to fixate the discussion on Democracy around the topic of elections.

Arizal1 wrote:I think I might have tried to much to answer to your distorded vision of liberal thinkers and not enough to defend them.

My distorted view? All I've said is that they defend private property, then I gave a Marxist analysis of private property and the consequences of its existence.

Arizal1 wrote:I read Hayek (albeit some time ago) and I didn't understand from what I read that someone life and death wasn't important.

I get the impression, from this thread, that you don't understand much of anything you read. Sorry; it's how I see things after trying to explain something to simple to you, 5 times.

Arizal1 wrote:Actually, he was advocating a minimum income.

He attacked the idea of a welfare state and said that it was anti-liberty/anti-freedom.

Arizal1 wrote:Rawls told us about a veil of ignorance in which we were to wish a society for which whichever place where we would land would be good for us. He crafted the difference principle, which meant that inequality in the society had to serve the most needy (because he believed that those inequalities were producing wealth).

Yes, the piece of shit believed that inequality produced wealth. Don't you think that that's an argument that favours/promotes the existence of inequality? And have you yet shown interest in reading my perspective of why I don't trust Welfare Liberals or Social Liberals? Have you yet tried to see why I believe that Welfare Liberals and Social Liberals are anti-proletariat? No, you just keep repeating shit here (and trying to give me some optimistic view of Liberals' intentions), without reading my analysis of how their stances - regardless of intention - result in fuckery that I refuse to tolerate.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Arizal1 » Sun Jul 26, 2015 2:19 pm

Please, I tried to say that I misunderstand you by adding this "from" and that now I understand what you initially said. Period.

This road-building thing is one way in which the government wastes money. If we build durable roads, maybe we would have been slightly closer to being out of our serious debt situation.


Yes, however then some people wouldn't have jobs or the deficit would be higher. The government would probably have to raise taxes, fight against corruption and fiscal havens. I do not say those are bad ideas, only that it would require some political courage. It would indeed be a big investment in the short term to help everyone better in the long term.

I know what you are talking about. It is not almost as I described. It is time-consuming and annoying. When an unpopular candidate is eliminated, his/her votes don't necessarily all go to one candidate, so you have to count the ballots again to allocate the votes to other candidates.


It's as if there were multiple rounds to the elections, but all at the same time. What you are suggesting doesn't give a way for electors to weight their preferences, and what I am suggesting doesn't give a way for electors to give an equal appreciation to candidates. I suppose there is a choice to do or we have to choice an even more complex system. Yours doesn't sound that bad.

My distorted view? All I've said is that they defend private property, then I gave a Marxist analysis of private property and the consequences of its existence.


I said distorted because you doesn't seem to see how their theories could be said to defend the poorest in the society. The fact that this don't happen much doesn't mean there is no potential.

My distorted view? All I've said is that they defend private property, then I gave a Marxist analysis of private property and the consequences of its existence.


He attacked the idea of a State extending its tentacles everywhere by agressively regulating everything. He attacked the idea that unions were working for the whole society. And he argued that the correct way to run a society would be to give it the most universalistic rules possible in order to keep at a minimum the government interference with the market while helping people. Liberals often think from the point of view of the State because it is the powerful body of the era. They try to keep it from dominating everything and to kill liberty.

Yes, the piece of shit believed that inequality produced wealth. Don't you think that that's an argument that favours/promotes the existence of inequality? And have you yet shown interest in reading my perspective of why I don't trust Welfare Liberals or Social Liberals? Have you yet tried to see why I believe that Welfare Liberals and Social Liberals are anti-proletariat? No, you just keep repeating shit here (and trying to give me some optimistic view of Liberals' intentions), without reading my analysis of how their stances - regardless of intention - result in fuckery that I refuse to tolerate.


Well, back to the original thread, then. Yes, the idea that inequality has to serve the most needy promotes the existence of inequalities, but inequality isn't always bad. I understand that you think you gave me powerful reasons to think liberals were anti-proletariat. Sorry but I didn't see that. What I saw so far was how the situation of some LGBT in your country was poor, which is a bad situation that every liberal authors I know of would be against. You also talked about marijuana and how there were double standards in the way justice operates. Again, this is not a good think. Do this stem from private property? I would say it is your turn to be very theoric if you believe that. You think that structurally, as long as there will be private property, it will continue. To be perfectly honest, I think the situation you are describing in your country is very preoccupying. It is probably true that the wealthy don't want to give more than the strict necessary to the poors and that there is a big class divide. The situation might be so bad as to give you the impression that the only solution is a violent uprising dispossessing them in order to start anew. And you might very well be right. Without some sort of leverage, there will not be redistribution of wealth.

What I'm saying is that the liberal theorists aren't advocating fot your country's situation and that it is possible to imagine societies with less inequalities still having private property (for example, the famous Scandinavians).
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Siggon Kristov » Sun Jul 26, 2015 4:10 pm

Arizal1 wrote:
Siggon Kristov wrote:Yes, the piece of shit believed that inequality produced wealth. Don't you think that that's an argument that favours/promotes the existence of inequality? And have you yet shown interest in reading my perspective of why I don't trust Welfare Liberals or Social Liberals? Have you yet tried to see why I believe that Welfare Liberals and Social Liberals are anti-proletariat? No, you just keep repeating shit here (and trying to give me some optimistic view of Liberals' intentions), without reading my analysis of how their stances - regardless of intention - result in fuckery that I refuse to tolerate.

Well, back to the original thread, then. Yes, the idea that inequality has to serve the most needy promotes the existence of inequalities, but inequality isn't always bad. I understand that you think you gave me powerful reasons to think liberals were anti-proletariat. Sorry but I didn't see that.

No, I do not think that I "gave" you a powerful reason to think that Liberals are proletariat. I offered you my essay, and you haven't read it. You don't see my reasons because you haven't read my essay, and you would prefer to annoy me by having me repeat myself in this thread, instead of reading something where I said most of everything that I'll say here.

Arizal1 wrote:What I saw so far was how the situation of some LGBT in your country was poor, which is a bad situation that every liberal authors I know of would be against. You also talked about marijuana and how there were double standards in the way justice operates. Again, this is not a good think. Do this stem from private property? I would say it is your turn to be very theoric if you believe that. You think that structurally, as long as there will be private property, it will continue.

It's not fucking theoretic. It's what happens. Large areas of land are owned by wealthy persons who occupy it in low density, while smaller areas of land have less wealthy people densely crammed into limited private space, so their livelihood exists mostly in public space. It's barely a double-standard; it's a single identifiable standard if you identify private property as a part of the standard. The police do not usually go into private spaces to enforce their anti-LGBT and anti-drug laws. Private spaces are the place of socialisation of the middle class and up, while public space is the place of socialisation of the lower-middle class and down; the dynamics of private property result in this occurrence, which cannot be separated from an analysis of how the police end up only enforcing law on the non-wealthy. Again, it's not a double-standard; the standard is just wealth/property itself.

Arizal1 wrote:To be perfectly honest, I think the situation you are describing in your country is very preoccupying. It is probably true that the wealthy don't want to give more than the strict necessary to the poors and that there is a big class divide. The situation might be so bad as to give you the impression that the only solution is a violent uprising dispossessing them in order to start anew. And you might very well be right. Without some sort of leverage, there will not be redistribution of wealth.

No, I am Left.

Arizal1 wrote:What I'm saying is that the liberal theorists aren't advocating fot your country's situation and that it is possible to imagine societies with less inequalities still having private property (for example, the famous Scandinavians).

Liberal theory is impractical in a country where slavery and colonialism have contributed to lasting race/class divides and unfair distribution of land/property/wealth. Of course, Liberals would claim that they see the redistribution of land during apartheid in South Africa as a bad thing, but they would be the first set of fuckboys to run to defend private property when the state decides that some white bourgeois fucker doesn't deserve it.

The Scandinavian countries are different. Jamaica is a majority-black country where people have tried to appropriate the colonial white culture, and white/brown people are more respected than Afro-Jamaicans, even by Afro-Jamaicans. Liberals are the ones telling us to trust in trickle down, and to live in perfect harmony with the white/brown people who have all the money from the exploitation of Afro-Jamaican (and to a much lesser extent, Indo-Jamaican) labour. The factors of class relations in Jamaica and the Scandinavian countries are not the same, because class relations in Jamaica are directly-related to race relations. Liberals are content with hereditary ownership of wealth, which entrenches racial divides in wealth disparity.

And here again, I'm repeating - and elaborating on - points that I already made in my essay. You could save both of us a lot of time by reading it, but no; instead, you will reply to me, requiring that I elaborate on something to defend my arguments, when what I will likely say is something I also said in my essay which you are reluctant to read.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Darkylightytwo » Sun Jul 26, 2015 7:27 pm

actually Siggon, what you see here is a grave problem in the left.

We though alienation was economics, but no, it is mental. People accept a premade ideology and they never leave it. A conservative will accept conservative ideology, then, this ideology will prevent them from thinking in any independent way.

A free people in not necessary one who think in the left, but one who do not need any ideology to understand what is going on.

Seem like he really believe in private property and everything you can say that disprove the concept he already believe in, will go by one ear and exit by the other.

Alienation is a mental process, people are stupid and so, I am very skeptic on democracy.

EDIT : I do not consider neo-liberal to be liberals, and I only construct this threat by logic I learned in my courses.

If i remember well, there are two major difference between classic and neo
Classic consider the market naturally free, no need to have state crack down on syndicate or to have prevent regulation, as long as one does not directly control the market, is free, even all business would be nationalized, the market could still be free if uncontrolled. A state can regulate here, because as long as individual can enter in competition, market is free.
Neo don't consider the market as free, so not only must the regulation stopped, the state must present to protect the interest of the wealthy, market is only free when business are able to do everything they want and set the price they want. That is freedom for Hayek. only freedom of prices, not of people.

The other is state.
Classic would consider a state con justify itself by its regulation.
Neo believe only the (free market) justify the state

My conclusion, libertarian saying they are (classical liberal) are liars, indoctrinated by the ideology they accepted. There is no difference in being indoctrinated by Christianity, by Islam or even by libertarianism.

Eedit 2 : capitalism is based on exploitation, of everything, so of course, in these state, hard work is never rewarded by wealth and fortune.
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Arizal1 » Sun Jul 26, 2015 10:53 pm

Seem like he really believe in private property and everything you can say that disprove the concept he already believe in, will go by one ear and exit by the other.


The only thing I saw were demonstrations on how capitalists could be exploitive and mean. Proving that the situation of Jamaica is bad doesn't prove that property right is bad, nor that welfare exists only to exploit people, nor that liberalism is hypocritical at its core. There are many people who want to improve the situation by using the ideas of market and of competition. Those recognize of course that for a market to exist, there must be structures preventing it to become a vicious circle where immoral conducts are what make people earn money, but it is not easy. This is why there are so many rules and it the fact that we have different views about morality also makes it difficult to agree on what should be done.

Asking you to prove me that capitalism doesn't work would be as silly as you asking me to prove that socialism doesn't work. All I can do is give you some ideas about the human nature and some historical examples. I can also say that if socialism requires that the people cannot choose what he wants to do, then I'm not a socialist.

Beside, proving that liberalism is wrong wasn't the original subject of this thread. It was supposed to be about the difference between liberalism and neoliberalism. I think neoliberalism can be considered as a branch of liberalism, as would be libertarianism and social-liberalism. The latter is a tentative to incorporate some interventionist ideas to liberalism. As I see it, neoliberalists (like Friedman) are less prone to recommand representative democracy and more to use the market to take decisions. The classicals were really about empowering the burghers against religion and the nobles (as I said before).
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Re: Classical liberalism....

Postby Darkylightytwo » Sun Jul 26, 2015 11:19 pm

Arizal1 wrote:
Seem like he really believe in private property and everything you can say that disprove the concept he already believe in, will go by one ear and exit by the other.


The only thing I saw were demonstrations on how capitalists could be exploitative and mean. Proving that the situation of Jamaica is bad doesn't prove that property right is bad, nor that welfare exists only to exploit people, nor that liberalism is hypocritical at its core. There are many people who want to improve the situation by using the ideas of market and of competition. Those recognize of course that for a market to exist, there must be structures preventing it to become a vicious circle where immoral conducts are what make people earn money, but it is not easy. This is why there are so many rules and it the fact that we have different views about morality also makes it difficult to agree on what should be done.


You don't get my point, my point is that private property is bad, if you ever read Tocqueville, you would notice he likes America but he think there is no aristocracy, and wealthy inequality was not that bad;. his observation where only theory, but this is the critic of marxists, why private property is just bad. It create a new aristocracy and this is not compatible with democracy
Maybe you need to ask youselves a question, does free-market must be always be with capitalism ? the answer for me is no.

Arizal1 wrote:Asking you to prove me that capitalism doesn't work would be as silly as you asking me to prove that socialism doesn't work. All I can do is give you some ideas about the human nature and some historical examples. I can also say that if socialism requires that the people cannot choose what he wants to do, then I'm not a socialist.

Capitalism is just one part of the society and it relies on exploitation, that much is truth, meanwhile, socialism does not equal dictatorship of freedom of choice but very active redistribution of wealth and power, as i said high, a Communist free market society is possible.

Arizal1 wrote:Beside, proving that liberalism is wrong wasn't the original subject of this thread. It was supposed to be about the difference between liberalism and neoliberalism. I think neoliberalism can be considered as a branch of liberalism, as would be libertarianism and social-liberalism. The latter is a tentative to incorporate some interventionists ideas to liberalism. As I see it, neoliberals (like Friedman) are less prone to recommend representative democracy and more to use the market to take decisions. The classicals were really about empowering the burghers against religion and the nobles (as I said before).


My point was that Libertarian are not liberals and that neo-liberals are not liberals. And actually, Neo-liberalism is not democratic. Therefor Libertarianism and neoliberalism are distortion, but are not branches, they are parasites. because of they transform two important aspect of liberalism, what is free market anbd what justify the state.

The classical liberals all lives in times where nobles and kings had all powers, their though have to be adopted to our times right now.
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