Critique of Libertarianism

I'll reply to this when I get home to work.

For now I'll say:

1. Monopolies generally dont form in the free market.
2. The system we have is NOT capitalism, but merchantalism.
3. Everyone in market anarchism is accountable for acts of aggression.
4. Human rights cannot exist without property rights.

 

First I'll say that libertarianism is not right wing. You have incorrectly associated free markets exclusively with the right. Additionally I will point out that 'moral failings' presuppose a morality. Presumably this means your morality, which I assume is altruism. The evils of altruism (and the debate as to which morality is the correct morality) belong in a separate thread, as it is a separate topic.

People who produce the most accrue the most wealth. The wealth cannot be used to violate other people's property rights. If it is so used then either the system is not anarcho-capitalism, or the offending party is a criminal.

Political power and wealth are different things. Political power has no place in libertarianism. Economic power is a contradiction in terms.

Straw man argument.

Libertarianism anywhere means extreme advocation of freedom. The exact opposite of tyranny. There is no absolute power, and cannot be an absolute power under an anarcho-capitalist system. Absolute power necessarily implies a system other than liberty.

Further, 'corporate entities' do not exist. There is no entity that you can point to and say "that is a corporation". A corporation is just a group of *INDIVIDUALS*, and in a free society each of those individuals is wholly responsible for his own actions. Any act of aggression by any man against any other man, or his justly acquired property, is a criminal offense.

Firstly human rights necessarily cannot exist without property rights. How can you have the freedom to do anything if you don't first own your own body. Given that you own yourself, now you need to own food in order to feed yourself. If you want free speech, then you need to own media on which to publish your ideas. There is no such thing as human rights without property rights. Property rights ARE human rights. Humans survive by manipulating the natural environment. And therefore it is necessary to be able to own parts of it; I.e. those parts you have changed and which did not previously belong to someone else (except in the case of voluntary exchange.)

Secondly, nonintervention leads to competition; which leads to lower prices, higher wages, and better products. The precise opposite of monopoly. It is absurd to think that monopolies would form without intervention. How would they? What is to stop me forming a company in competition with a current monopoly? No one. So I form my company and now the monopoly is broken.

Some people will comment that the larger company could buy me out or undercut me. This is true, but only to an extent. The larger company has limited coffers, which will quickly run dry if they engage in these business tactics without any government assistance. This is because everyone can form a company in competition. A company can only run at a loss for so long. Larger companies have higher expenses than smaller companies too, which makes it easier for small competition to stay afloat during these tactics than one might think.

Two kinds of monopolies can exist in the market place. The monopoly which is based on government granted privilege. And the monopoly which is a natural monopoly. Very few of the latter exist, and as technology improves their number shrink ever smaller. Of the former, it may be said that these monopoly corporations do the most damage of any agency in the world, except perhaps the government itself. You know these corporations by name of public private partnerships. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public-private_partnership

These are monopolies created by the state, to ensure revenue to the state. The system that advocates these entities is Merchantalism, which we are presently under.

What a load of bullocks. To begin with, there is no such thing as 'state subsidized capitalism'. It is a contradiction in terms. How can a free market be free... if it is 'subsidized' by a power monopoly, whatever that means in that context?

Third world countries have had despotic feudalistic rule by an elite group. The very reason that a distinction existed for a time between first and third world countries (although that distinction is quickly disappearing) is precisely because first world countries adopted libertarian economic models. That is: they allowed free, or moderately unhampered trade, ownership, and business. Everywhere this has occurred anywhere in the world, in any time in history, it has lead to wealth creation and better standards of living for most (if not all) involved.

Indeed, see what divergence from a classical-liberal economic model did for the USSR. They had high military expenditure, and high technology. And yet the peasents were starving to the point of cannibalism. In fact the population got so sick of being forced to slave away for the state, at subsistence, that they eventually gave up. And the whole system collapsed.

Look at China. Completely feudalistic until only recently. What changed? The implementation of liberal economic theory. When given a little bit of freedom people build, create, invent, and trade. All natural rational human activities, which they are normally forbidden or hampered from doing by the state.

How do you 'shove' freedom down someone's throat? Say we were liberating slaves (which is what libertarians are doing in essence), would you exclaim that I should not shoot the slave owner and free the slaves because it would be 'shoving freedom down their throats'. 'But they may not want to be free' you cry. Then let them live in a commune, as communists, if that is their choice. But let them make it voluntarily. Surely no one wants to be, or deserves to be, owned as property, be it by the state or the hands of just one man.

If he actually said this then he was an idiot. But I daresay this is a misquote and he really said "equality under the law". In which case the statement would be true.

No libertarian wants, or advocates equality. People are not equal, they are unique. Unique entities can necessarily not be equal. Every man is equal in death, so let him live his life how he pleases, while he still has it.

Thomas Jefferson was a capitalist in every sense. What sort of blatant lie are you attempting to impose here? Perhaps your definition of capitalism is WRONG? Allow me to enlighten your left-washed mind. Capitalism is the economic system of the free market. All it means, quite literally, is that people are free to save and spend their own capital. It is not statism. It is not merchantalism. It is not feudalism. It *is* synonymous with 'free market'.

Maybe you are again confusing yourself. Liberalism of the day was what we now refer to as Libertarianism; because you lefties stole the term from us. Liberal means free (as in freedom). Liberal economics means 'free economics'.

Libertarians believe in fundamental inalienable human rights; all of which stem from the self ownership principle. Because I own myself, and no one else can legitimately own another human being, the initiation of force against another human being is illegitimate, regardless of who initiated it. Government, soldier, bank manager -- we don't care. Each human has the right to self ownership. You cannot steal my justly acquired property, and call it taxation, it is still theft. You cannot enslave me, and call it conscription, because it is still slavery. You cannot murder me, and call it war, because it is still murder. Each man has free-will and owns his own body, and therefore is also RESPONSIBLE for his own actions. There is 100% accountability in a free society.

I don't know much about the particular case but:

It seems to me that they had come out of a high inflationary period into the liberal reforms. Which, by the way, kept the fiat currency AND fixed its price against other currencies. They also failed to allow private ownership of copper, which is no doubt one of chille's main export industries. And, while I have no checked, it seems quite likely the redistribution of government assets, such as mines and infrastructure, was arbitrary -- Ie given out at random, or to favourites.

By all accounts those 'liberal reforms' were highly lacking. And, having had only 20 years, with the existing unfree distribution of land and resources maintained, the plan was unlikely to succeed in any big way anyway.

Again, I don't know much about the specific case, but:

The introduction of a sales tax can hardly be said to be a liberal reform. Deregulating the financial market is meaningless when the banks engage in fractional reserve banking, and are licensed by the government, and ultimately controlled by the reserve bank of NZ. (This is still merchantalistic.) The printing of new money -- inflation -- is a form of fraud and taxation. A free market needs a free money supply, such as gold.

Further, no doubt the bulk of restrictive land and property ownership regulations and taxes remained. Thus the changes to the economic model were virtually meaningless.

Are you yet to realize that a system in which the state controls ownership of land and money, and who can be a bank, and what land can be built on in what manner, is already so far removed from capitalism that liberal tweaking is only going to get you so far?

 

Just call it by its proper name. Anarcho-capitalism, or market anarchism.

Economic power, in the sense you wish to use it, is a contradiction in terms. The magnitude of wealth collected by an individual or group of individuals does not change their rights over others. Others may work voluntarily for the wealthy, or they may boycott the wealthy. It is not of the same kind or nature as political (I.e. state) power. So I advise against mixing such terms in future.

To begin with, this is a mixed analogy. Like I stated above, the use of the term 'power' is ill-defined in your statement. You use it to mean two things, when it can only mean one in the context.

"[SIZE=-1]A power vacuum is an expression for a political situation that can occur when a government has no identifiable central authority. ..."

The very point of an anarchistic society is to create and maintain a power-vacuum indefinately. We don't want government.

You then go on to say:
[/SIZE]

Now you are talking about 'economic power', and not political power. So we've shifted from forced to voluntary paid labour

Everyone needs food and shelter, even the wealthy. And they obtain it more easily on the market than if they were left to fend for themselves.

You seem to have the impression that land distribution, and therefore the means of production, would be unfairly distributed in a free society. This couldn't be further from the case. Far from keep the existing property titles, we go back to original ownership and ask "what is it that makes owned land different from unowned land". The answer is that owned land has been mixed with the owner's labour, and is therefore his. He has taken it from nature, mixed it with his labour and thus appropriated it to his person.

Thus, under a natural law free society any unused land is unowned land. Meaning that you can only legitimately claim ownership of land you are using or have used in the past.

Additionally, any land that has been used in the past, but is no longer being used, and who's owner has disappeared or perished becomes once more unowned. The homesteading principle applies here too.

So your argument falls to pieces when it is pointed out that:
a) Perpetual monopolies don't form in the truly free market. and,
b) Anarcho-capitalism, if ever implemented, will result in a fair and objectively principled division of land, resulting in a widely distributed means of production, making it nearly impossible to become 'super wealthy' unless you actually produce so much that you deserve to be. And even then, it would be impossible to buy all the land, because land holders raise their prices when they see you coming, until you run out of money.

Liberty is not power and power is not liberty. You have the power to drive down the street with no number plates. But you do not have the freedom to do so. The difference is obvious. There is nothing objectively wrong with driving your automobile without plates, but if you do so then the state will crush you for disobedience. That is the fundamental difference.

It is possible to have 100% liberty whilst being the poorest man on earth. You may be poor, but at least you'll be free to improve your life.

Economic inequality that will naturally exist is not a problem. If person A has an IQ of 80 points, and person B has an IQ of 140 points. Would you sit there and force the human beings who employ these people to pay them the same wage. What a gross injustice this would be. The intellectual services of someone with an IQ 140 are much more valuable than that of a person with only 80.

Further, a free producer is only different to a labourer in that he has saved enough capital to start an enterprise. The labourer has a different time preference, he simply desires to spend all his money now, rather than save it. In other words, the labourer is free to consume 100% of what he earns only because capitalists exist. He is only free to do so because he can find employment with someone who has saved capital and started an enterprise.
The labourer is actually free to forego the risk of enterprise, and get paid weekly and in advance, rather than after-the-fact and depending on the enterprise's success. It must be understood that the capitalist entrepreneur pays for everything in advance usually out of his own pocket.

Further, the labourers are free to invest their spare earnings in an enterprise and get a percentage of its returns. Thus they are not 'enslaved' to their wages. They have many options, but they choose not to exercise them.

Your argument may be further discredited by considering it's relation to reality.

A man must eat and have shelter to survive. Reality does not provide these things for him. Thus he must create his food, and his shelter with his own bare hands. But is this not a coerced set of options? He does not want to do these things, but he is forced to, if he wishes to survive.

Your solution to this problem of 'needing to survive' is to enslave capitalists to the labourers and force the capitalists to make the labourer's lives easier. Of course you fail to realize that the capitalist and the labourer are exchanging in mutually beneficial trade. I.e. the capitalist's goods (indirectly) for the labourer's labour. If you force the capitalist to expend more of his capital than he would have otherwise, on the labourers then you will find that he has gone out of business. And no work exists for the labourers to take up. But no jobs is considered a bad thing, even by your crowd. So make up your mind, do you want the ability to work or not?

See my above discussion of land distribution for details on property rights.

This argument is a dead horse. You keep beating it, oblivious to the fact it has been refuted ad nauseum.

Look at your rivers and your air now. Government and government privileged monopolies (privatized infrastructure companies) are the biggest contributers to pollution, in air, water, soil and noise. Everything from sewage in your rivers, to acid rain, to nuclear contamination. It is all the state's fault. By comparison, the vast majority of private land is very clean and pollutes little if at all.

It was the government courts which ruled against class action lawsuits to have airports and factories shut down due to noise and air pollution. It is the courts who dismiss similar law suits for river pollution.

It is your bias government courts which allow the injustice of damage to private property (pollution) to go unchecked. In a free society these factory owners, or sewage plant owners, or airport owners would be wholly responsible for any damage they did to other people's property. Including damage to lungs, as lungs are part of the property of the owner.

So to you I say: government allows and causes greater than 90% of the pollution of which you speak. So why are you complaining to me?

What a stupid argument you persist in. In a libertarian society it would be reasonable to expect people to have cheap 'pollution insurance', as perhaps part of their standard 'damage to property' insurance. Because there is no license and fee structure on insurance companies, because there is no state, this would be perfectly valid.

Now, say someone decides to put a power plant next to my property. My insurer, to avoid paying out a large sum of money to me, is going to be quite interested in such things as what sort of energy the power plant will use, how high its smoke/steam stacks will be, and its estimated impact on the evironment. It may buy the land before the power plant company can get there, or it may pay the power plant company to make modifications to their designs, or it may pay me my lump sum, in which case I can move house without a problem.

Now imagine I am stupid enough not to have insurance, and someone starts polluting the water running through my property. I can sue them, if I can find the source of the pollution (which isn't difficult by air) for polluting (damaging) my private property. At this they would either be forced to stop polluting, or to dam the river on their property in order to stop the pollution getting to my property. This is, unless of course, they don't own title to the water on their land, in which case I would sue whomever does own that title.

How are you interfereing with my right to own property? If you have a piece of land, then I get the piece of land next to you. There is no interference. I believe you are referring to the fact that land is a finite quantity. But again, your ownership does not interfere with or prevent my ownership. It just means I have to buy land off you, if there is no new land to acquire.

While this may seem unjust at first glance, it is actually completely fair. Just as in the market, the first one in comes out best dressed. If you take the risk to go and colonize new land then you deserve the spoils of your efforts. Just like if you take the risk to start an enterprise in a virgin market then you deserve the spoils of that enterprise.

Further, to observe the stupidity of your argument, let us apply your implied alternative to private property. If no one can own any land, then what incentive does one have to build something on that land. If I built a house would you tell me the house didn't belong to me? What about if I pulled a gold nugget out of the ground and turned it into coins. Would that also not belong to me? But if not for my ingenuity and labour the resource of the land would be untouched and therefore unproductive. If no one can own, then no one can build or produce on, with security. And if no one can do either of these things then man has quickly perished.

Or perhaps your alternative is to grant all of the land to the state!? And let them decide who can use what, for what purpose and in what manner. Ask the Chinese and the Russians how this worked out for them. I think you'll find that the only thing produced was starvation.

Right to private property is inalienable. You own your own body. If you do not then what right do you have to walk around, speak, eat and breathe. This would all be done on someone else's property which would be illegal and immoral. Therefore you must die. You must die the second you are born to be consistent with your own moral and legal philosophy.

On the other hand if you accept that each man owns his own body and that which he appropriates to himself from nature, by mixing his labour with it, then man has flourished, in the plenty that nature provides.

Historic and deductive logic.

There are hundreds of thousands of such examples in history. Ford motor is only one such example.

Competetion works like it always has. Each enterprise wishes to employ productive skilled labour to produce their products. But in a free market there is always 'too many' enterprises trying to produce too much. The result is competetion. The competetion in the market causes each enterprise to try and undercut the next enterprise, forcing prices lower and making the methods of production more efficient. In addition, the unceasing demand for skilled labour by the enterprises, as they expand, causes wage competetion, in which each enterprise will try to 'steal' skilled workers from the next by offering them better pay and benefits, and safer working conditions, and shorter hours.

Thus in a free society where, intervention is nonexistent, competition is plentiful and the labourers get more for their money, more money, and more time to spend it.

This has nothing to do with whether or not the monopoly is broken. If I start a company and it folds, then the monopoly was broken. Someone else can start a company and that too can fold. This may go on indefinitely, in which case there must be a reason consumers are not buying from the competitors. That reason must naturally be that the existing company is so damn good at producing it's products, and its prices and quality are so attractive that the competitors fail to gain market share. In which case the existence of a monopoly is not bad.

And should the monopoly ever get complacent and increase prices then one of these companies will start up again and steal their market share.

This is stupid and historically incorrect. Great monolithic companies have many efficiency problems which are unable to rival the cheap innovation of small competitors. You clearly understand nothing of business or economics. The only reason transnational organizations even exist on the scale they do today is government intervention in the market. If they had no corporate welfare and no government contracts and no third world slave labour (as enforced by third world governments) then they'd find themselves unable to compete in the harsh real markets of the world.

You naturally forget that people gravitate toward the best quality product and the lowest price. Why do you think AMD, a tiny company, was able to gain a huge market share over Intel, a massive company? It was not because of intervention, it was because AMD had a better product, and arguably still does. Indeed, AMD has a loyal customer base, of which I am one, who will continue to buy its products to support it against the giant Intel. People always root for the underdog.

This isn't even an argument, but a question.

The answer is, as it so often is with libertarian matters, private property. Private companies should be allowed to own roads and infrastructure, as historically they did, before the government nationalized them. The difference is you would pay for what you use, rather than what other people use. If you wish to drive through new york city during peak hour, then whoever owns the roads on which you drive is probably going to charge you a fee. This can be considered a form of rent. That is: you are renting the road space for a period of time. You would naturally pay a premium during peak hour, because demand for road space is higher.

Thus we have a free market solution wherein the transport system becomes faster and more efficent the more people use it, rather than slower and more gridlocked.

The owner of a busy street is going to be raking in the profits. Which, if he has any sense at all, he will invest in upgrading his road, to allow still more people through, which will get him even higher profits. Thus if a single lane road actually needs to be an eight lane highway to supply the demand of road-space consumers, then this will what will happen.

Now it is typical for statists to proclaim: "Ah ha! but what if the road owner is an evil man who won't let anyone use his road, and that road is the only way to get from one place to another"

Well it seems unlikely that he would do such a thing, since it is economically not in his best interests (the profit motive is very powerful). But supposing he did, there would very likely be an alternative route. And if there wasn't then weren't you foolish for going out there (wherever you are in the first place) without first securing a contract entitling you to drive back on his road.

So the answer to your question is when everything is privatized, you pay only for what you use.

The best infrastructure is put there by private enterprise and nationalized by the state. What is a road but an overland trade route. The trade came first. Then the private merchant courts. The government came later and declared its ownership of all of the above.

This is fucking stupid. There is no country in the world that has freedom. Third world states have feudalism. About as far from libertarianism as you can get. I think you have simply neglected to do any research on the matter whatever, and you are just throwing arguments writen by someone else at me. Which I deflect with ease.

I wonder who else you've misquoted...

Jefferson thought that he who owns his own business is of superior virtue to he who works indefinitely for a living. This is true enough, although I see no reason why it impacts or changes the discussion. Independence from the whims of other men is certainly something to be desired. But if you advocate that the state should replace private enterprise then I fail to understand how you have achieved this desire. If anything you've made the mass of the population entirely dependent on the state. Under freedom dependence is voluntary, as is independence.

No really. Everywhere its had a chance, free trade has caused much wealth and progress. Take any of the trading city states for example. Singapore, Hong Kong. The US had a good run of almost free markets, to which it owes its short lived prosperity. The greatest the world has ever seen.

England had free trade for a time, before the government moved in and turned it into an empire.

Everywhere you see massive wealth and a middle class, they have had moderately free trade for some period of time. This is an historic fact. Please review your own country's history and see for yourself.

Humorous. You go back to original definitions, which often have no relation to current meanings of words. Liberalism is/was libertarianism. Look up 'classical liberalism' for confirmation.

"Entrenching domination of the weak by the strong?" What?
That is not what we want at all. The weak benefit most from freedom. The weak benefit most from the division of labour. What sort of idiotic nonsensical notion do you have of freedom. No one is forced to do anything by any other man. The fact that people have to live by working is a fact of reality, not of other men.

You would have the strong provide for the weak, against their will. And you would call this freedom? How utterly absurd. Freedom is as freedom is. If, under freedom, you perish because you refuse to work, or are unable to work, then so be it. It is not my responsibility to help people who cannot help themselves. Nor is it anyone else's responsibility to help me.

A weak man who could not grow his own food would have a good/much better chance of survival in a free society. Say for example, he is a musician. He does not need to be strong in order to play good music. And so he specializes in what he is good at, and uses the profits of his exchange (labour for money) to purchase the goods he would otherwise have to produce himself, on the market. That is, he performs, gains capital then expends capital to buy food and shelter, which allows him to survive.

It is precisely because of mutual benefit from exchange and the division of labour that the weak and the poor are the best off under freedom. Under your system EVERYONE IS EQUAL IN THAT EVERYONE IS POOR. You would have us go back to feudalism, although you would not know it. With a large powerful state the only system that can possibly end up working is totalitarian feudalism. Why do you think it is that every socialist and communist country in the world -- that is: every country without a market of some kind -- has turned into despotic feudalistic rule by a tiny elite. It is because that is what comes of central planning. It is the opposite of freedom, it is mass slavery.

You have a very very poor understanding of what it means to be free.

 

I can't be bothered to respond again. The last one was 4000 words.

I suggest you do a little research into the history of the human race and see what you find with respect to free trade and free markets.

In addition I'd not take anything away from that silly test. I looked at the questions and all of them are yes/no. Which means that you can't give a libertarian answer.

 

Actually I'll reply to just a couple.

The difference is that the private property owner has legitimate title over his justly acquired property, while the state does not. The state claims arbitrary ownership over the whole land area without having first transformed it from its natural state-- without having mixed its labour with it.

Again a silly argument. Land ownership stems from original ownership which is only legitimate when the land is transformed from its natural state. Further, even when someone is on your property it is usually invalid to violate their rights. Especially in the case they did not deliberately trespass.

Other than the fact they have civil war and tribalism it might be ok.

There would still be law. Courts existed before governments took them over. Labour standards cannot be held up by legislation and never have been. If you pass a law saying the minimum wage is X then your unemployment rate will rise hugely. Its simple economics. If the business owner can't afford to pay the workers the artificially inflated value of their labour then they go out of business and there is no jobs for anyone.

Far from being content with the eggs from the chicken you want to roast the chicken and have that too!

No. Unowned land remains unowned until someone comes and appropriates it by transformation. All state owned land becomes unowned.

All this indicates is that we need proper distribution of land through an objective means of determining which land is owned and which is unowned.

Initially they might, yes. But in the long run when there are no real [violent] barriers to competition then this monopoly is not the bad kind of monopoly. If they are constantly under threat of being undercut by a new competitor then they won't be able to get away with charing stupidly high prices or delivering crap service. They can only get away with these practices when people are forced to pay; Ie taxation.

Further, the quantity of wealth needed to enter a market is virtually arbitrary. If you can find investors then you can enter the market.

The state has a large number of unfounded and unethical copyright laws relating to films music and movies. There is no reason to want to stop these companies joining together. If they join together and make terrible movies at high prices then no one will watch them. If someone wants good movies then that person will start a movie studio in competition.

As a countermeasure to the privileges large companies already get from the state. When you have zoning you've already basically restricted who can enter any sort of commercial or industrial market. Thus only large players enter. Thus you setup an artificial environment where it is easy to put together a monopoly because small players physically actually cannot get into the market. Due to the shortage and high price of zoned land -- and in many cases not knowing the right people.

This is why antitrust laws exist. So that licensed government business environments don't clump together into one huge mass. On the free market however, this is not a danger, because there are not licenses and no zoning. Thus competition is free and more people join the market to undercut the big boys.

That is up to them. It is their choice to sell their labour to any particular person. It is also their choice to spend 100% of their income on consumables instead of saving and investing in their own business.

Why would a few elite gain monopoly control? Would they reform every last scrap of land then sit on their mountain top and claim ownership of the entire country. No one would accept that. Land ownership stems from transforming and putting land into production. If anyone tried to cheat this criteria, claiming a huge quantity of land for themselves, then it wouldn't work for them. The criteria would naturally move to whatever land is currently in production and so on, until the ownership and distribution of land was fair.

Eventually, we will need to move into space to acquire new land. But this will be / is a natural push by people who want free land. And so the problem of limited land is a self solving one.

Most of these freedoms aren't available, or are limited, under the current system. For example, I currently work full time for a boss I dislike. My working hours are quite long and I have to do uni on the side. I am saving money to buy land. But guess what. When I get to the point of owning some land, the government is going to tax me every year on the land I own. Then they are going to tell me that I can't build this that and the other thing, on my own freaking land. How unjust is that? Zoning laws and government licensing are unfree and unjust laws. Why can't I put a bank on MY land? Why can't I put a shoe factory on my land; or a data center, or a mine? Why not? There is no reason, other than that the state wants all the revenue from these classes of enterprise to itself.


Thats enough for now. You clearly think I am one of these 'rich monopoly owners'. No. I am just a regular guy trying to build and create a business from nothing. The thing I want to stop is;
a) the government preventing my entrance into markets by force; and
b) your lot coming along after I work my ass off to get to a point of business ownership and stealing my capital! Why can't you thieves just leave normal people be?

 

This is quite absurd. As with all scientific things, it is not what hypothesis you hold, but what evidence or reasoning caused you to form that hypothesis.

Thus if I answered 'strong agree' to their question: "Do you think the principle of an eye for an eye is a good one?" They will attribute this to some political position with no knowledge as to WHY I hold that principle. As such, the test is completely invalid. It tests only the effects and not the causes of each aspect of a political position, meaning that any principled discipline of ethics, morality, and politics will return a false result by their test.

If you think so. But you are really kidding yourself, and you know this right? Deep down you know that it is wrong to assert unjust force over others, and that the only thing that can ever justify any use or threat of force is [SIZE=-1]retributive justice[/SIZE] / retaliation.

Oh I've read my books. I read a new one every week. Clearly you, on the other hand, are unaware of the terrible failings of socialism and the current problems with your projected progressive 'utopia' of the day.

You wanted a strong state, you have one. You wanted large welfare systems, you have them. You wanted high taxes, you have them. You wanted regulations, they exist. And yet you are still unhappy. Most of mankind is suffering. Wages go down, prices go up. People die in hideous ways from war. Despotic rule replaces democracy and people have no hope.

You have your dystopic future. It is here; embrace your illusion. Embrace death.