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Kryptos
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There are no Libertarians in the US
#28006236 - 10/19/22 10:43 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Interesting graph I saw earlier today, of voters and their economic/social opinions. Democrats tend to be socially and economically liberal, and Republicans are socially conservative and more or less across the entire spectrum of economics.
So, the average Republican identity is in favor of strong social control and not much else, and the average Democratic identity is opposed to social control and favors economic equality.
Thoughts?
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The Ecstatic
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28006239 - 10/19/22 10:45 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Libertarians are just what conservatives call themselves when they’re embarrassed to say they’re conservatives.
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Psilynut2
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: The Ecstatic]
#28006306 - 10/19/22 11:19 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Kinda like how communist and socialist is something people just call themselves because they don't want to admit the Democratic Party is as close as they will ever get .
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Psilynut2]
#28006437 - 10/19/22 12:53 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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I don't mind being called a Democrat, I vote Democrat.
However, the picture shows something fundamentally different from what you are implying. The picture shows that Republicans profess to love freedom and autonomy, but also believe that social freedom and autonomy must be restricted.
Democrats profess to love social freedom and economic equality, and [democratic voters] generally believe in social freedoms and economic equality.
It also helps explain why right wing pundits, nowadays, have become more accepting of redistributive economic policies while simultaneously pushing a culture war narrative: the economy is not the point to the right wing. Controlling those that live their lives differently is the unifying cause of the Republican party.
Edited by Kryptos (10/19/22 03:53 PM)
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The Ecstatic
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Psilynut2] 3
#28006628 - 10/19/22 03:25 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Psilynut2 said: Kinda like how communist and socialist is something people just call themselves because they don't want to admit the Democratic Party is as close as they will ever get .
Kinda the opposite actually. “Libertarians” are just embarrassed to associate themselves with the dominant power structure, but they don’t have any ideological qualms about it.
The left despises their association with the Democratic Party because they’re ideological opposed to it’s political project (neoliberal capitalism).
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: The Ecstatic]
#28006678 - 10/19/22 04:03 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Another thing I only alluded to, but it was a focus of the article, is that Trump campaigned as if he was economically left and socially conservative, but as president, acted economically right and socially conservative. This is pretty common in right wing messaging.
So maybe the old political standby of "it's the economy, stupid!" is, in fact, stupid; and the actual line should be "it's the ability to oppress the less fortunate among us, stupid!"
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The Ecstatic
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos] 1
#28007459 - 10/20/22 06:38 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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It’s the old LBJ quote, that if you convince the working class man he’s got someone beneath him in the social order, he won’t give a shit what you do.
Kinda like how everyone believes they’re in the middle class. It’s that insidious idea of precarity that makes everyone think “sure things are bad but they could get a whole lot worse for me if we try to change anything.”
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christopera
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: The Ecstatic] 1
#28007478 - 10/20/22 07:08 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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In my area self professed libertarians generally have like three things they want to talk about. There is a venn diagram where they fit somewhere in these circles. Not always, but usually this is the case. Generally it's that property taxes are illegal or unjust and they think they should be abolished. I will include in there taxes for schooling, because they don't have kids, or want to home school. Then they usually don't believe in systemic racism or are unknowingly racist or openly racist. They use the excuse of being a libertarian to excuse their racism, basically trying to explain they want freedom for everybody and thus they can't be racist. Finally, they want weed to be legalized, another version of their freedom based approach, however one that most everybody should be for in our society.
Generally speaking, libertarians here have no clue how our society would sustain without education or tax to fund it. They don't know how our infrastructure would sustain with all these taxes removed. They don't get that a lot of parents rely on schooling to watch their children while they work, and they don't realize that a lot of impoverished children simply get sustenance at school that sustains their life. Usually they don't own property anyways, or if they do they move to areas with the perceived notion of lower tax burden. I'll give an example, a lot of them love to move a county over because they have a lower millage rate for property tax. The difference is that in this county they never reassess your property value, so after a few years of ownership your effective rate is lower, while in the lower millage county you get reassessed every three years. Classic tripping over dollars to pick up a penny. Finally, they like weed. There are of course versions of this, some wanting more guns, less police, certain things that do and don't make sense.
But those top three pretty much describe them. I used to hang out this bar, COVID killed it. The one bartender is a super awesome dude. He is also black. One day I am there grabbing a beer at like 4pm, I got out early. These two like 22 year old white guys come in. There are maybe six people in the entire place including the staff at this point. The two guys start telling the bar tender how they are libertarians and start going on about how awesome Trump is. Then they go off about how they want equal rights for everybody, totally uninitiated. This bartender looks them square in the face, points to the door, and tells them to leave. They ask him what the problem is and explain they like to smoke weed too. WTF. He takes their beers, tells them it's on the house, but to never return to this bar again. These two had no clue.
-------------------- Enjoy the process of your search without succumbing to the pressure of the result. A Dorito is pizza, change my mind. Bank and Union with The Shroomery at the Zuul on The internet - now with %'s and things I’m sorry it had to be me.
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The Ecstatic
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: christopera]
#28007483 - 10/20/22 07:23 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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What if everything was exactly the same except I didn’t have to pay taxes and you couldn’t arrest me for smoking weed?
Paradise.
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Rahz
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28007991 - 10/20/22 03:17 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Kryptos said: Another thing I only alluded to, but it was a focus of the article, is that Trump campaigned as if he was economically left and socially conservative, but as president, acted economically right and socially conservative. This is pretty common in right wing messaging.
So maybe the old political standby of "it's the economy, stupid!" is, in fact, stupid; and the actual line should be "it's the ability to oppress the less fortunate among us, stupid!"
He added a lot to the deficit. I'm not sure there's such a thing as an economic right anymore.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace I am I feel I do I love I speak I see I know “Science advances one funeral at a time” ~Max Planck
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Rahz]
#28007996 - 10/20/22 03:20 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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That has nothing to do with right wing economics. Right wing economic policy focuses on two things: cutting taxes/regulations and slowing the economy via low interest rates to maintain generational wealth. Trump did both of those things.
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Rahz
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28008134 - 10/20/22 04:59 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Ahh, I thought you were talking about fiscal conservatism.
-------------------- rahz comfort pleasure power love truth awareness peace I am I feel I do I love I speak I see I know “Science advances one funeral at a time” ~Max Planck
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twighead
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Rahz] 1
#28008574 - 10/20/22 11:47 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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in my experience from having ended up at libertarian rallies - is they are obsessed with guns to the point of fetishism and think taxes are the worst conceivable thing ever, but wouldn't mind paying 300$ a month to use roads as long as it was the free markets dictation
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SirTripAlot
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28008802 - 10/21/22 05:53 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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It's not that simple, low interest rates are beneficial for the middle and lower class, as well. Just ask a first time home buyer right now.
-------------------- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: SirTripAlot]
#28008958 - 10/21/22 08:28 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Quote:
Rahz said: Ahh, I thought you were talking about fiscal conservatism.
Fiscal conservatism is like libertarianism: everybody pretends it exists, but it does not and never did.
Fiscal conservatism, in practice, comes down to two fundamental concepts: cutting taxes/regulation and slowing the economy to a crawl in an effort to maintain generational wealth and the supremacy of capital. That is what fiscal conservatism is. Balanced budgets and all the other claptrap is irrelevant, and everybody knows that.
Quote:
SirTripAlot said: It's not that simple, low interest rates are beneficial for the middle and lower class, as well. Just ask a first time home buyer right now.
...and how do low interest rates accomplish this benefit to first time homebuyers? Right, by slowing the economy down to ensure that money maintains artificially high value, allowing those with smaug hoards to continue controlling the levers of power, instead of having to compete with new entrants in the market. Low inflation and low interest rates are good for those seeking to accumulate a hoard of capital. Whether that hoard be half a mil for a house or half a bil for a yacht depends on who's ballsack you squirted out of.
Inflation is good for the debtor and the wage slave, and very bad for capital. Inflation makes debt worth less, and inflation allows significant jumps in pay. Inflation also reduces the value of a giant pile of money sitting in an offshore bank account. That's why we want low inflation, it ensures the supremacy of established capital.
Interestingly, while high interest rates might be pummeling first time homebuyers, those of us with fixed rate mortgages negotiated during covid are...well, let's just say I'm a lot less worried about my payments. My bank, on the other hand, keeps telling me about all the benefits of refinancing. They don't like watching their capital investment get inflated away.
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SirTripAlot
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28009058 - 10/21/22 10:00 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Inflation is a good thing in moderation, and remains one of the most heralded roles of the FED. Typically, they shoot for around 2% annually. We have breached that multiple times over. Rates should have increased years ago with this moderation in mind. You will get no argument out of me that they were asleep a the wheel.
The type of inflation we are seeing is not the mean it should be. This type of inflation can and will cause a dollar to be worth less than it used to be.....this lowers all consumers' purchasing power. This results in a need to earn more money to maintain the same standard of living. Rent prices, as an example....food etc.
Interest rate hikes of this nature (especially a retroactive one in nature), hurt your average Joe and his life, more than that of the fat cat.
-------------------- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Edited by SirTripAlot (10/21/22 10:53 AM)
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: SirTripAlot]
#28009106 - 10/21/22 10:57 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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It seems that you are drawing an arbitrary distinction between "good" and "bad" inflation that in reality does not exist.
The founding tenet of capitalism, the idea of accumulating capital, is inherently deflationary. As you accumulate a pile of money, that money is removed from the economy. Even if you then re-invest it, it is less liquid than money that is not owned by you. Thus, inflation must be instituted as a counterbalance towards the inherently deflationary aspects of capitalism, because the optimal strategy in a deflationary environment is to hold on to what you have. This means less spending, which leads to economic collapse.
So, inflation has to be high enough to counteract the deflationary effects of capitalism and prevent total economic collapse.
Now, capital does not like risk. Risk is how you lose your capital. Capital would much prefer to sit on their hoard in a deflationary environment, as that means they become wealthier with zero risk. So capital is very heavily invested in keeping interest rates low. Now, we have this idea that low interest rates boost the economy (by making money cheaper to lend), which I am starting to think is a spurious correlation. Low interest rates means that capital maintains their hoard easier, and their profits come largely on their ability to offer loans to poor people, and extract interest payments from them. Low interest rates "boost the economy" by facilitating money liquidity from those with few assets to those with more assets.
The problems begin when those with few assets start becoming those with no assets, and going into debt is no longer an adequate way to float along. The correct solution to this problem is, of course, to solve the oversupply of people with no assets, because the primary problem is that they still require resources that they can no longer afford. Of course, this solution is not very politically palatable, because we have not yet completely established the equivalency between poverty and immorality. This would be difficult to establish, because poverty is reasonably widespread in the US, and it becomes a lot harder to scapegoat a group of people when most everyone knows a member of that group. That's why we have to contort data into associations between poverty and race or religion or whatever.
Anyway, since there is no politically viable way to simply sacrifice a certain portion of the population to cut resource consumption, (yet, we're working on that) we must use inflation to balance out the money in the economy. Essentially, when we say that there is a 2-3% "sweet spot" target for inflation, what we are saying is that % pop growth + % money in the economy hoarded by the rich should be roughly equivalent to 2-3%. Population grows at ~just under 1% per year, so we are expecting that the rich hoard 1-2% of the entire monetary supply per year.
Except instead, they hoarded 8% or 9% or whatever. So inflation jumps that much to keep up.
In reality, I think they hoarded more than their allotted 1-2% per year for the last decade, and were no longer able to keep cooking the books, so the sharp jump in inflation needs to account for years of artificially low inflation.
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SirTripAlot
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28009140 - 10/21/22 11:34 AM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Arbitrary distinctions need to made all all the time especially in economics. In fact, you yourself must make these distinctions in your financial decisions. You made this distinction with the refi of your home you meantioned.
It seems you feel inflation is the ultimate cumshot and goal of economics. Although nesscary, it is only one facet of a big picture, and no, capital needs risk in order to grow, hence the interest rates we are discussing. Inflation is fine, but the rampart type now, is not. People with zero capital, need lower interest rates as well so they can get an "affordable" loan. People with debt need and desire lower interest rates, in order keep that asset, whether fixed or unsecured.
With all of these things wrong, and things we disagree on, could you tell me how the USA has remained the reserve currency for such a long time? If the FED has gotten its economic theory wrong with how they manage inflation,, how are we still the top dog after all these years? Obviously a country that would just give capital to those with none, would have usurped us by now based on your theory.
-------------------- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Edited by SirTripAlot (10/21/22 12:11 PM)
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Kryptos
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: SirTripAlot]
#28009204 - 10/21/22 12:09 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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Inflation is not the ultimate goal of economics, inflation is the fundamental nutrient without which modern capitalist economies could not exist. It is the fiscal expression of the infinite growth axiom upon which the entire system is built.
Inflation expands the pie. Inflation forces people to actually use their money, because otherwise it loses value. And inflation affects the poor and the rich equally. However, I believe that inflation is ultimately a good thing for the poor, because they have nothing to inflate away. I've argued before, inflation is the great equalizer. If we saw 100,000,000,000% inflation tomorrow, yes there would be chaos. And that chaos would come from the sudden realization that you and Jeff Bezos are now financially equivalent. Inflation is the secret anarchist failsafe of capitalism. It can be used to destroy the established financial hierarchies.
That is why inflation is so terrifying to capital. That's why they fight to keep it low. And as a correlational indicator of the economy, it has been relatively successful.
And that's the whole point. Inflation is the fiscal expression of real growth. Not numbers on a screen, but people, factories, boxes of paperclips growth.
If growth continues but inflation stops, then the owners of the means of growth get to reap the difference. After all, the real growth is there, but if the fiscal growth is not there, then those who conceptualize growth through fiscal means, i.e. wage earners, don't get to see the benefits.
Until the system becomes unstable, and something snaps, and inflation either has to catch up, or a number of people who can no longer afford to live must be sacrificed.
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The us of the USD as the reserve currency of the world has less to do with stable inflation and more to do with (a) the fact that the US government has never defaulted, (b) the fact that oil is traded in USD, and (c) the fact that people who try to change the status quo find themselves staring down an aircraft carrier's worth of freedom and liberty.
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SirTripAlot
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Re: There are no Libertarians in the US [Re: Kryptos]
#28009252 - 10/21/22 12:34 PM (1 year, 6 months ago) |
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How does a $2 cheese burger, that was $1, benefit the poor? If the cheese burger was $1.10 after years of inflation, yes. But thats not the scale we are experiencing. Inflation must be incremental and moderate like I suggested earlier.
When you refied your home, did you do this to a higher interest rate? Why did you want a lesser rate or not take equity out? Those distinctions can be made, based of the interest rate itself. Without an interest rate that is untouched by a central banking system with inflation in mind, would make these arbitrary decisions near impossible. Price signal, which was mainly devised by Freidrich Hayek is a fundamental aspect that gives both consumers and producers the ability to make these decisions.
Yes capitalism, is a flawed system as all economic systems can be. The price signal system, and free markets have done a remarkable job of coordinating people’s actions, even though seperate coordination was not part of anyone’s intent. I dont discount your subpoints regarding the dominance of our currency, but you give no credit to the Federal Reserve or the ecomonic paradigm that put us in this position.
-------------------- “I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.”
Edited by SirTripAlot (10/21/22 12:50 PM)
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