authatheist

Feel like playing with laz0rz and shit? How about using your own money to arrange for that? Don't wanna? Well, good thing you can just use shitloads of money that's been forcefully taken from people!

So you're telling me that if I produce a bunch of shit-sandwiches and no one wants them, for whatever mysterious reason, then if I produce some more anyway, suddenly I'm the sole consumer of said sandwiches?

How does that make sense, considering no one has even eaten (=consumed) one?

> production can't be saved in general someone else must borrow

What's that supposed to mean?

You're not addressing my post, where I tried to highlight the silliness of your earlier claims.

How does consumption "have to" match production? How do you figure "money has no value"? Now you're talking about "intrinsic value" but earlier it was just plain "value".

People save money for a reason you know. If money has no value, as you originally claimed, then there's no reason to save or possess it. If money has no "intrinsic value" that doesn't make your original claim any less confused.

But to be precise, value is purely subjective. We've been using the word somewhat ambiguously. Value is utility as a means towards an end. Money, as a medium of exchange, has utility as a means towards countless ends, and that's exactly why everyone wants it.

You say people have a disincentive to invest because it's risky, but I don't see a point there. It all depends on the investment opportunity, and the investor's tolerance to risk etc, ie. the circumstances. Some people do invest, some don't. So what?

You say that not investing doesn't "solve any consumption problems", but what the hell might those be? Again, why does consumption "have to" match production? What does that mean? What's a "consumption problem" and whose problem is it, and why?

Why is (price-)deflation a problem, considering it means our purchasing power is increasing? Do you really want to claim people want less stuff for their money?

Don't pretend you're giving me an economics lesson.

I know that, but the OP didn't seem to. He claimed consumption "has to" match production.

Kickbacks from the prison-industrial complex, of course. They're bribed to ruin people's lives, but that's fine with the prosecutors themselves because they're sociopaths.

You have no idea what you're talking about.

Inflation is a tax on savings, but that's alright because money has no value?! But if money actually had no value, there would be no use for it.

Consumption "has to" match production?! What's that supppsed to mean? If I produce something no one wants, people "have to" consume it anyway?

You say inflation is good because it motivates people to invest (because their money loses value just sitting in a bank), but why wouldn't people want to invest even if their money was gaining in value? The purchasing power of whatever money you earn through investments is increased by deflation too, so the sooner you make a good investment, the better off you'll be.

A straw-man libertarian you met?

Freedom just means that no one forcefully intervenes in your life, assuming that you're not harming anyone yourself, of course.

Demoracy is just mob rule. You'll find it unacceptable any time you're being forced to comply with what the majority wants. You know most people are idiots, right? You don't want idiots making decisions that affect your life. Does that help?

"It" what isn't about the price? If you feel like pointing out that cartels are more specifically about the profits (increased through raising the price), I'm afraid that's an irrelevant distraction.

We both know how cartels work. I pointed out that cartels don't last without state support. You don't feel like accepting that, just like you still haven't addressed my point about rulers.

Cartels are created and maintained by governments through prohibitively costly licences that are just denied to pesky outsiders that would actually compete with the other producers.

We're not going to get anywhere if you keep side-tracking the conversation, but that's exactly what staunch statists always do. Why? Because they can't handle reality.

We keep having to tell people that having no ruleRs doesn't mean having no ruleS. If by "no system" you mean "freedom", that's fine with me. Sure, we need rules and negative consequences for breaking them, but that does not require rulers.

Somehow you failed to address my point about rulers, by the way.

How would the remaining cartel members cause harm to the defector by badmouthing him?

If the guy is selling X for half the cartel price, and can point to the cartel members and tell people how they've been screwed by them, what do people care aboit what the cartel scum is saying anymore? Nothing. They'll just buy X for 50% cheaper. You know you would too.

Who are trashing the planet? Ordinary people, or big corporations who've paid politicians off to let them pollute? What about militaries all over the world? Do you really think ordinary people are the problem here, or govts the solution? Really?

A tiny elite can't rule over millions if the millions are opposed to being ruled at all. Today, no one sees governments as the rulers they are, but everyone considers dictatorships illegitimate.

But from our point of view, what's the practical difference between being forced to comply with a King's royal edicts and being forced to comply with a bunch of politicians'?

Cartels can't be maintained in a free society. We know everyone participating in one is a scumbag, and the more lucrative the cartel's position is, the more motivated the participants are to betray the others (because there's lots of room for competing on price and taking away all the captive customers, thus making shitloads of money).

If a large enough percentage of people decide to disregard govts and forcefully defend themselves against their enforcers if necessary, then govts just cease to function and exist. I'm not saying we're there now, or even near a point where that's feasible, but it is one way out.

Rulers monitor us to cement their power over us, but in a free society without political power, with free-flowing information available to all, companies would have to be careful about what they do, lest they lose their customers, ie. their income.

That's beside the point, and of no comfort to the sheep that get eaten.

My "solution" is to wake people up to the fact that we should not have rulers at all. That's the only way to achieve a non-nightmarish future in the long term.

People see tyranny creeping up all over the West, for example, but it doesn't occur to them that instead of asking our rulers to please not oppress us, we should stop believing in their authority altogether.

You have your activism, and I have mine.

There is no "privacy protection". The organization that supposedly protects our privacy is the exact same one we need protection from. It's like a bunch of sheep trusting that wolves will protect them from getting eaten by wolves.

It's absolutely ludicrous to claim that the Rule of Law™ works when, as a random example, highway patrol officers are routinely stopping drivers for the express purpose of confiscating any money they find.

He already pointed out that voting or writing to "your" representatives doesn't work, but ypu're still calling for some sort of democratic solution. Please stop.

You know that governments tend to abuse their power over us, so you want one arm of the government to keep the other one in check? One head of the Hydra will prevent the others from biting you?

The US is a prime example of how a limited government just doesn't stay limited. Words on a piece of parchment don't actually prevent psychopath rulers from abusing us. The USSR had a constitution too, and it "guaranteed" free speech just as well as any other constitution would, ie. not at all.

There's no political solution to the abuses caused by an arrangement of rulers vs subjects. The only way to improve things is to realize we should not have rulers at all.

Of course people have. People are being tortured to death by governments this very moment.

The point was the utter insanity of it all, of the same way of societal organization of rulers and subjects continuing for millenia on end.

Tyranny intensifies, and tyranny loosens up, but no matter how many times our rulers prove to us that having rulers is a bad idea, the masses keep accepting them anyway.

By "poor leadership" did you mean "warlord rulers taking the vast majority of the aid money thrown in their general direction"?

Wouldn't that be pretty fucking insane though, to get imprisoned for opening a page that you had reason to believe the government didn't want you to see? Sentenced to life in prison for Unlawful Use of Eyesight.

If you're worried about that actually happening, you just might live in a police state, don't you think?

But let us never doubt that governments are a wondrous, necessary and Just institution. Sometimes they just have to torture you to death to maintain order for, you know, the greater good and all.

Draft-eligible men, huh?

You say it like it's something men would want. "I'm eligible for being shipped overseas to kill or be killed. Yay for me."

You're worried about what drones will do to warfare?

Imagine you're a psychopath ruler of say, 320 million people, you have a massive fleet of killer drones at your disposal and you're electronically monitoring everything your subjects do. There's an old piece of parchment that says you can't be naughty, but you've already "normalized" violations of its rules, and hey, it's not like text on a piece of paper actually binds you in any way - you're the ruler after all.

Suppose that you don't really feel like giving up your power, even after you've completely destroyed the economy. The masses of human livestock on your tax farm are understandably upset about not being able to secure work, food or shelter. Can you think of ways to use your fleet of killer drones for maintaining your position in power?