Dealing with ultra-libertarian idiocy?

[Covenant]

I think it's a mistake to discount the various 'ethnic' groups from Europe that all came together and nowadays just comprise some amalgamated 'white' blob of America. There's much more to ethnicity than skin-tone, and confusing racism with ethnic chafing is a mistake.

[Junghalli]

Besides, I'm pretty sure the idea of ancient empires being held together by strong personal loyalty of vassals to king is mostly a romantic myth. The vassals obeyed the king because it was in their interests: he helped them out against enemies and it was less painful to poney up the extortion money (a.k.a. taxes) he wanted than to fight his armies. Indeed in quite a few feudalistic tribute-based states, like the Aztecs, the vassals hated the king.

Or look at the Romans. They held together a very diverse multi-ethnic society for more five hundred years with a structure that was not a feudal and generals who obviously often felt no great personal loyalty to the Emperor, since they were constantly doubt-crossing and usurping him.

It was fundamentally force of arms that kept ancient empires together, not romantic Camelot-esque ties of loyalty.

[Vendetta]

It seems to me that the best way of dealing with a Libertarian would be to beat him senseless and steal all his stuff.

After all, if he runs to the law, he's betraying everything he claims to stand for...

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Personal opinion, I'm afraid, is no substitute for extant fact.

Did not a recent natural disaster which rendered you an exile reveal a graphic inability on our part to successfully integrate a vast swath of our population? I think the evidence is self-evident. We certainly haven't been particularly good at integrating Muslims, either.

This does not defeat the general observation that a multiethnic society has been built and successfully functions. The present multicultural fad aside, the plain fact is that for all anyone rants about pride in their ethnic backgrounds, none of these people are going to be willing to trade the society they enjoy here in the United States for the Old Country, so they learn to get along with one another each generation.

The United States is however a unique example, based on the idea of mass immigration from innumerable countries, rather than on the direction of multiple ethnic groups in their sundry homelands by a single unified central government, or personage representing their governments. The USSR has not worked out so well that way, and China is working because it is swamping its ethnic minorities in thrice their weight of Han as we did with the Native Americans.

Who constitute only a very tiny minority of the overall population and, again, does not defeat the general observation.

Only if you choose to disregard the special circumstances of the United States.

[Patrick Degan]

Personal opinion, I'm afraid, is no substitute for extant fact.

Did not a recent natural disaster which rendered you an exile reveal a graphic inability on our part to successfully integrate a vast swath of our population? I think the evidence is self-evident.

No, that recent natural disaster showed the utter disasterous failure that is the Bush Maladministration, which spent a good three years not only draining away the needed monies for hurricane protection projects but also in wrecking FEMA and turning it into a mechanism for crony privilege. The displaced refugees from the New Orleans flood, on the other hand, have been successfully integrated into the communities they wound up in regardless of race. What is self-evident is why it's not a good idea to let the Republican Party have power in this country.

We certainly haven't been particularly good at integrating Muslims, either.

Based on what? Is the United States facing a domestic problem with radical Islam among the American Muslim community? Where is the evidence for this failure of integration? Are American Muslims working against their country?

This does not defeat the general observation that a multiethnic society has been built and successfully functions. The present multicultural fad aside, the plain fact is that for all anyone rants about pride in their ethnic backgrounds, none of these people are going to be willing to trade the society they enjoy here in the United States for the Old Country, so they learn to get along with one another each generation.

The United States is however a unique example, based on the idea of mass immigration from innumerable countries, rather than on the direction of multiple ethnic groups in their sundry homelands by a single unified central government, or personage representing their governments. The USSR has not worked out so well that way, and China is working because it is swamping its ethnic minorities in thrice their weight of Han as we did with the Native Americans.

Really? And how do you explain not only the historical example of the Roman Empire but also the extant multiethnic societies of France, Germany, Britain, Canada and Brazil which also exist as free democratic societies, only one (two, technically) of which has a purely ceremonial monarch who has no real power and is certainly not enforcing tradition over parliamentary rule?

Furthermore, the USSR failed not because of ethnic separatism but because its economy had gone into the toilet and due to political corruption which Stas Bush could explain in greater detail in connection to the dissolution of the union.

Who constitute only a very tiny minority of the overall population and, again, does not defeat the general observation.

Only if you choose to disregard the special circumstances of the United States.

See above. Really, you're going to have to do better than this.

[Illuminatus Primus]

Her historical solution to ethnic divisiveness is to simply let the commoner have absolutely no value whatsoever, so only the more unitary noble culture matters. This is not exceptable because these feudal states provided inferior public services to the aforementioned states.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

Her historical solution to ethnic divisiveness is to simply let the commoner have absolutely no value whatsoever, so only the more unitary noble culture matters. This is not exceptable because these feudal states provided inferior public services to the aforementioned states.

On the contrary, Louis XIV's France provided free grain to the impoverished directly from the government, which was the norm in all such societies, and the Catholic Church provided almost all equivalents to modern social services; a secularized government could simply appropriate those functions with little issue. It's arguable that there were more resources available for the poor in medieval France than in the modern United States, where homeless people, in particular, have an almost impossible time of getting government aid because they have no fixed address, which is required to obtain any sort of ID which is in turn required to access those services. And welfare reform has provided fixed time limits to things like food stamps where their equivalent in the medieval period (the grain dole) were offered indefinitely and without question. The right of any person in society to eat, and therefore, not to starve to death, was recognized in medieval times but in the present has become bureaucratized and controlled to such a degree that it is actually difficult to get help in feeding your family, which is ludicrous.

[K. A. Pital]

Did not a recent natural disaster which rendered you an exile reveal a graphic inability on our part to successfully integrate a vast swath of our population? I think the evidence is self-evident.

Not. The natural disaster only showed that with a breakdown of public administration, people will do bad things. Cue: pogroms happened even in the monarchic ages.

The USSR has not worked out so well that way, and China is working because it is swamping its ethnic minorities in thrice their weight of Han as we did with the Native Americans.

There's many more multi-ethnic societies than your examples, and I'd even pose that most of modern countries are multi-ethnic to an extent, some more some less, but they all manage to exist without resorting to traditional authority nonsense. The USSR worked, before it's leaders became totally corrupt, ruined the economy with runaway inflation and debt, then proceeded to absolve themselves of any responsbility about what happened to the country later as it fell apart. Ethnic tensions were pretty bad (to the point of armed conflict) only in places where the Soviet government failed to lift the major portion of the population out of tribal mentality (Georgia, Karabach, various -stans, etc.).

The right of any person in society to eat, and therefore, not to starve to death, was recognized in medieval times

If you discount the fact that substinence agriculture dominated the time and caused very frequent hunger no matter what "rights" the society granted to a person, that doesn't really matter. Besides, to think that medieval governments in total provided a right to food isn't correct. Much smaller populations where just about everyone was poor, but some were starving, is different from the current situation where large industrial production produces enough resources for the support of all.

What is the difference between a progressive and a paleoconservative? Paleocons look at "golden times" before industrial production where peasants lived in dirt, without sanitation, striving to make enough food to live and tilling the land from dawn to dusk. Not a golden age, but extreme hostility to inequities of modern times forces them to think that of the old days. A progessive looks at that, but fully realizes that reversing industrial progress is impossible and paleocon times will never rise again (unless, of course, a very massive urban die-off occurs). Thus he tries to formulate rules for a more advanced social system in the modern age, while paleocons weep constantly and without any use about a dark age which passed away.

[Junghalli]

You know, somehow I'm pretty sure if you look closely through the histories of monarchal societies you'll find plenty of fuck-ups on par with Katrina.

[Junghalli]

In fairness to Duchess, feudalism thought of society as cooperative, as opposed to modern capitalism, which tends to think of human relations as adversarial. I can see how one might find that an attractive idea. However, I see absolutely no reason why a society can only be cooperative if it concentrates power into the hands of a handful of inbred swine.

[Patrick Degan]

In fairness to Duchess, feudalism thought of society as cooperative, as opposed to modern capitalism, which tends to think of human relations as adversarial. I can see how one might find that an attractive idea. However, I see absolutely no reason why a society can only be cooperative if it concentrates power into the hands of a handful of inbred swine.

No, feudalism thought of society as the lord and his gentry and below them, landed slaves. Peasants "cooperated" if they didn't want to be burned out of their hovels or hanged. Modern capitalism does have the adversarial dimension, but in reality it also must be a cooperative endeavour if it is to succeed and be profitable.

[Junghalli]

Not a golden age, but extreme hostility to inequities of modern times forces them to think that of the old days.

But preindustrial feudal societies had much greater inequality than modern democracies. A feudal society was a sharply tapering pyramid where a tiny percent of the population at the top owned virtually all the wealth and generally exploited the hell out of the impoverished "base". The broad, relatively affluent middle class that modern First World nations have is a recent phenomenon cotemporaneous with the rise of capitalism and industrialization.

No, feudalism thought of society as the lord and his gentry and below them, landed slaves. Peasants "cooperated" if they didn't want to be burned out of their hovels or hanged.

I was speaking of the idealized theory behind it, not the reality. Of course, the theory was basically just an excuse the elites thought up to justify the giant extortion scheme they called an economy.

[K. A. Pital]

But preindustrial feudal societies had much greater inequality than modern democracies.

I'm pretty certain I described the monarchist attitude as a false observation. I.e. in the critique of modern society they turn back, forgetting that the society from "back then" wasn't egalitarian or terribly cooperative at that.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

But preindustrial feudal societies had much greater inequality than modern democracies.

I'm pretty certain I described the monarchist attitude as a false observation. ;) I.e. in the critique of modern society they turn back, forgetting that the society from "back then" wasn't egalitarian or terribly cooperative at that.

On the contrary, that is not what I support. Rather, I noticed something in the development of the Second Reich which was very interesting, the so-called "conservative socialism" of Bismarck appeared to be based around a specific development in society:

The Junkers (landed gentry, and by extension the nobility as well, who are just higher forms of the same) tended to ally with the factory workers in implementing social programmes beneficial for them, against the "nouveau rich" who owned the factories and directed their operation. This is where we get a retirement age and social security from.

The thing of it was that the Junkers class regarded its wealth as land. What happened in the cities wasn't their interest; that dealt with money, which wasn't relevant to them, compared with their inherited farms. Therefore, they were quite willing to levy income taxes and other measures on those whose wealth was tied up in factories and stock which produce regular income, for the sake of helping the workers in those factories through government intervention, because it had no effect on their own wealth, their inherited property. So the landed gentry were the best friends of the city workers, and the German system gave them the greatest power, which allowed them to effectually implement such programmes, unlike in the United States where the Robber Barons, the nouveau rich, were the unquestionably dominant class.

Now, you say, "all well and good, but what about the poor tenant farmers? Surely this just means more oppression for them". Except that technology was in fact removing that argument: In the modern world only three percent of the population works on farms thanks to highly industrialized farming techniques. And the Germans were certainly world-leaders in the development and implementation of scientific techniques of construction, farming, and development. Hell, they even more or less invented the modern chemistry laboratory at IG Farben. Before then advances had usually been made by individual tinkerers. In short, the trend was to make less and less of the population subject to the negative effects of the Junkers class' domination of the farmland, while placing more and more in the cities in a position where it was in the Junkers' interests to advance their personal welfare, to avoid instability and the rise of communism.

In short, the Second Reich could have survived almost entirely unchanged into the present era if it had won the First World War, because the portion of the population under the negative influence of the Junkers would have become as small as 3% and therefore politically irrelevant, and economic surpluses could have cured most of their ills, while the Junkers would retain powerful reasons to remain continuously allied with the working classes to prevent the nouveau rich from gaining the upper hand that they have achieved in Britain and America which allows them to utterly dominant our modern society.

So, no, I am not anti-technology. I just reject the idea as ludicrous that older forms of government cannot in and of themselves implement technological solutions effectively. Sheesh; Austro-Hungary had the fastest growing economy in the world in 1913.

[Pablo Sanchez]

The problem with your reasoning about the Junkers is that you're failing to account for the decline in the importance of the agricultural sector over time. It's true that the percentage of people engaged in landed agriculture has declined to about 3% of population in most places, but by the same token the share of agriculture in GDP has fallen to a similar figure: 3%. Also, the importance of imported agricultural products was rising all the time as Germany's population exploded; whereas the Junkers had smelled export opportunities in Britain early in the 19th century and pushed for free trade, by the early 20th century they demanded tariffs under the threat of grain from the Western Hemisphere. In fact in the decades leading up to 1914 the Junker economic system had to be sustained by strenuous effort on the part of the Kaiser's government.

The point is, that as the 20th century wore on and industry became more and more preponderant in the German economy, the Junker would have become obsolete as a class, with their landed wealth becoming a vestigial adjunct to their role as civil servants and bureaucrats for the Kaiser.

It's just a little odd to believe that a class, composing a minuscule proportion of Germany's population, controlling a minimal share of GDP, and requiring constant intervention by the government at the expense of the rest of the society--as, indeed, tariffs on agricultural goods would make food more expensive for the teeming masses of workers, and would serve to throw up trade barriers in the face of burgeoning German industrial exports--just to maintain its economic survival, would be able to maintain that kind of situation indefinitely in an era of mass politics. As more and more of the population became involved in industry in whatever capacity and consequently gravitated to the Socialist (for the workers) or Liberal (for clerks, skilled workers, and capitalists) areas of the political spectrum, it would be increasingly difficult to justify the primacy and special privileges of the Junkers. Apart from supplying officers for the army and bureaucrats for the government, who in any case could be got from other sources anyway, the Junkers would be supplying nothing to a government which incurred considerable expense both politically and financially just to keep them around.

The Kaiser would have to ask himself, as early as the 1930s or 40s, whether it was desirable to keep the Junkers in place in that specific form.

[Junghalli]

The rather good standard of living enjoyed by a typical middle class worker in the modern West suggests that there are other ways of achieving the same result, without going to the extremity of creating a politically powerful caste that is not answerable to the people.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The rather good standard of living enjoyed by a typical middle class worker in the modern West suggests that there are other ways of achieving the same result, without going to the extremity of creating a politically powerful caste that is not answerable to the people.

Please explain why it is intrinsically good that you have your politicians answerable to the people? The people are idiots, and should be kept as far away from the halls of power as possible. Landed nobility at least has the advantage of being trained from birth to govern, which is certainly more than what modern politicians can claim, and recommends them immediately, even if it can't avoid the same problems in essentially random selection (genetics vs. popular vote) in elevating incapable people; they are at least trained incapable people instead of untrained ones, which is intrinsically worse.

[Patrick Degan]

The rather good standard of living enjoyed by a typical middle class worker in the modern West suggests that there are other ways of achieving the same result, without going to the extremity of creating a politically powerful caste that is not answerable to the people.

Please explain why it is intrinsically good that you have your politicians answerable to the people? The people are idiots, and should be kept as far away from the halls of power as possible. Landed nobility at least has the advantage of being trained from birth to govern, which is certainly more than what modern politicians can claim, and recommends them immediately, even if it can't avoid the same problems in essentially random selection (genetics vs. popular vote) in elevating incapable people; they are at least trained incapable people instead of untrained ones, which is intrinsically worse.

Riiiight... Because we all know how well this theory worked out for France and Russia, don't we?

[The Duchess of Zeon]

The rather good standard of living enjoyed by a typical middle class worker in the modern West suggests that there are other ways of achieving the same result, without going to the extremity of creating a politically powerful caste that is not answerable to the people.

Please explain why it is intrinsically good that you have your politicians answerable to the people? The people are idiots, and should be kept as far away from the halls of power as possible. Landed nobility at least has the advantage of being trained from birth to govern, which is certainly more than what modern politicians can claim, and recommends them immediately, even if it can't avoid the same problems in essentially random selection (genetics vs. popular vote) in elevating incapable people; they are at least trained incapable people instead of untrained ones, which is intrinsically worse.

Riiiight... Because we all know how well this theory worked out for France and Russia, don't we?

Have you ever read Simon Schama's Citizens? A very strong revisionist argument can be made that pre-Revolution France was actually advancing into a very efficient country under Louis XVI's direction, and that the revolution itself was more in opposition to this than anything else, in its initial form, being seized later by demagogues tied with a quasi-Rousseauist ideology. Russia always did have far to many autocratic oriental influences in its monarchy for its own good, and shares far more with Byzantium than with any western feudal-evolved government to the point that comparing the two is somewhat disingenuous.

[Junghalli]

Please explain why it is intrinsically good that you have your politicians answerable to the people?

Because politicians, like all humans, are essentially self-interested, and tend to shit all over the interests of other people when they conflict with theirs. A politician without accountability to the people is likely to shit all over the interests of the people when it serves their own interests, which is pretty much what we see actually happening in most historical dictatorships. While democracy certainly has its flaws it at least has the advantage of giving politicians a strong disincentive to becoming a tyrant.

Really, the fact that the countries with the best standards of living tend to be democracies and the ones with the worst standards of living tend to be authoritarian dictatorships is rather telling.

The people are idiots, and should be kept as far away from the halls of power as possible.

How fascist.

[Patrick Degan]

Please explain why it is intrinsically good that you have your politicians answerable to the people? The people are idiots, and should be kept as far away from the halls of power as possible. Landed nobility at least has the advantage of being trained from birth to govern, which is certainly more than what modern politicians can claim, and recommends them immediately, even if it can't avoid the same problems in essentially random selection (genetics vs. popular vote) in elevating incapable people; they are at least trained incapable people instead of untrained ones, which is intrinsically worse.

Riiiight... Because we all know how well this theory worked out for France and Russia, don't we?

Have you ever read Simon Schama's Citizens? A very strong revisionist argument can be made that pre-Revolution France was actually advancing into a very efficient country under Louis XVI's direction, and that the revolution itself was more in opposition to this than anything else, in its initial form, being seized later by demagogues tied with a quasi-Rousseauist ideology. Russia always did have far to many autocratic oriental influences in its monarchy for its own good, and shares far more with Byzantium than with any western feudal-evolved government to the point that comparing the two is somewhat disingenuous.

Who the fuck cares? Even if Louis XVI started reforms, his predecessors had created the conditions for revolution long before he took the throne. And no, comparing France and Russia is not disingenuous, as both are primary examples of the sort of abuse and corruption inherent in monarchy and plutocracy. Don't like it? Tough shit.

[Adrian Laguna]

I take issue with people bringing up the Roman Empire to refute statements meant to apply to more modern times. The socio-political fabric during classical times was markedly different of that existing in recent centuries. For example, the concept of nationalism as we know it simply did not exist. Also, technological limitations rendered popular uprisings rather difficult.

[Pablo Sanchez]

A very strong revisionist argument can be made that pre-Revolution France was actually advancing into a very efficient country under Louis XVI's direction, and that the revolution itself was more in opposition to this than anything else, in its initial form, being seized later by demagogues tied with a quasi-Rousseauist ideology.

Oh, you're just trying to revise the definition of failure. One of the most critical tasks of government, if not the most critical, is that of maintaining internal harmony; even if a government is (arguably) advancing to a state of great efficiency in one arena, it's still a dismal failure if it allows popular dissent to rise to the level of revolution. Another example one could bring up would be the American Revolution, wherein the British government was actually doing rather a good job of rationalizing the status of the American colonies with respect to the Empire, but in the end it still added up to a colossal blunder because the result was the outright loss of the 13 colonies due to their insensitivity to local political conditions.

You can't say that the People are stupid because they overthrow "good" governments, anymore than you can say the wind is stupid because it blew the wrong way during your regatta. Popular discontent and violent disturbances of the peace are fundamental conditions, which it is the duty of a government to minimize. Insisting on the superiority of Western-style traditionalist monarchies doesn't make much sense in a world where all the real exemplars have been replaced by other forms of government, and countering that it was just a case of events conspiring against the poor feudal governments is a waste of breath, because that's what events do. They conspire against you. How effectively a form of government deals with events shows how good a government it is, if it fails to the point that it is overthrown and replaced, then it is a failed system, counter-factual analysis be damned.

[Junghalli]

Also, technological limitations rendered popular uprisings rather difficult.

I'd think uprisings would have been in many ways easier with an ancient tech base. With ancient tech any dude with a big knife was a viable combatant (if not a particularly good one). Nowadays a rebellion would have got get access to considerably more sophisticated equipment to stand much of a chance against the forces sent to surpress them.

[The Duchess of Zeon]

A very strong revisionist argument can be made that pre-Revolution France was actually advancing into a very efficient country under Louis XVI's direction, and that the revolution itself was more in opposition to this than anything else, in its initial form, being seized later by demagogues tied with a quasi-Rousseauist ideology.

Oh, you're just trying to revise the definition of failure. One of the most critical tasks of government, if not the most critical, is that of maintaining internal harmony; even if a government is (arguably) advancing to a state of great efficiency in one arena, it's still a dismal failure if it allows popular dissent to rise to the level of revolution. Another example one could bring up would be the American Revolution, wherein the British government was actually doing rather a good job of rationalizing the status of the American colonies with respect to the Empire, but in the end it still added up to a colossal blunder because the result was the outright loss of the 13 colonies due to their insensitivity to local political conditions.

You can't say that the People are stupid because they overthrow "good" governments, anymore than you can say the wind is stupid because it blew the wrong way during your regatta. Popular discontent and violent disturbances of the peace are fundamental conditions, which it is the duty of a government to minimize. Insisting on the superiority of Western-style traditionalist monarchies doesn't make much sense in a world where all the real exemplars have been replaced by other forms of government, and countering that it was just a case of events conspiring against the poor feudal governments is a waste of breath, because that's what events do. They conspire against you. How effectively a form of government deals with events shows how good a government it is, if it fails to the point that it is overthrown and replaced, then it is a failed system, counter-factual analysis be damned.

As Elizabeth I observed, "I do not like wars; they are uncertain." You cannot say that a system of government is invalid because it collapsed due to the thunder of the cannonade. Even the most brilliant of individuals can be undone by luck and circumstance when the guns begin to fire, and that's as true is violent revolutions as in wars, and let's make it clear that pretty much every one of the traditional monarchies of Europe which fell, fell because of military defeat, and for no other demonstratable reason. The French military even had numerous chances to suppress the insurrections which led to the revolution, let alone the circumstances of WW1 which scarcely bear repeating.