Ron Paul, Glen Beck, Sean Hannity in ATLAS SHRUGGED III

[Kekephee]

Originally Posted by cs616 [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

You realize you made a series of condescendingly cunty post attacking a political ideology and then accused people defending that ideology of doing the same, correct? If you want to have civil conversations about politics, don't start them out by making quips about the other side.

Not really. Maybe my "buy ammo sheeple" post could be interpreted as being a little snarky, though I meant it in fun, but the whole "cunt" post was in response to him coming at me with both barrels.

[Nuggie]

Orr, I do hope you are blowing this thread up in hopes of winning over those low information people. Because if not you are mired in a bog of eternally fruitless frustration. The left leaners are not going to see eye to eye with the right.

Anyone looking at those numbers should first read and understand the book "How to lie with statistics." Its very short and to the point. The basic idea is that you can't believe the numbers the vast majority of people throw out because they are generally comparing apples to oranges. Or they are only looking at part of the picture.

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

In what objective sense have we gone towards a free market in the past 30 years? Government spending as a percent of GDP, pages of federal regulations, etc. etc. have all increased significantly over that period. What measure do you use to justify your claim? And don't just point to a single regulation that was repealed without taking into account the thousands that have been added.

Lune - You never responded to this question. And given your recent love affair with statistics, surely you have some kind of objective measure for determining that we have gone towards a free market in the past few decades? Show me the data you're using for this. Put up or shut up.

[fadetree]

Ayn had her point. Took it WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too far, but its a mistake to totally ignore her. Very little in life is completely true or completely false. Socialism has its points too.

The thing that Ayn had to say that I most agreed with is that it is a form of enslavement to institutionally give things to people who didn't earn them. Liberal white folks dealing perpetual welfare checks have done more to destroy urban culture than anything else. It's a win-win for the establishment, not only do you get to look like you're a good guy by 'helping', you also get their votes. Sweet.

[Lune]

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Those statistics don't match my worldview, they most be 100% wrong!

So what you're saying is, the USA isn't being outperformed because you take objection to some of the ways the data is assembled and interpreted?

Or you acknowledge that we are being outperformed and instead just wanted to focus on the ways you think the data is imperfect?

You're not 'knocking them off', you're just obfuscating things.

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

B-b-b-but the free market is the perfect economic paradigm, and any flaw is because somebody tried to regulate something.

He literally admits he "presumed the self-interest of organisations, specifically banks, is such that they were best capable of protecting shareholders and equity in the firms". Those sound like objectivist principles to me; he is explicitly lamenting his hands off approach. Who knows, maybe had he not been a Randroid, he'd have stepped in, seen where the Greenspan Put was headed, and abrogated the behavior. You're trying to isolate him from any shred of his ideology when a great deal of what he believed ended up influencing policy.

Originally Posted by Orruar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Lune - You never responded to this question. And given your recent love affair with statistics, surely you have some kind of objective measure for determining that we have gone towards a free market in the past few decades? Show me the data you're using for this. Put up or shut up.

Move the goalposts all you want, I addressed all of these in that other thread. When you summarily refuse to accept any kind of evidence for increasingly asinine reasons, I don't feel obligated to provide it for you. You wouldn't even take Greenspan's personal congressional testimony citing the errors of the deregulation that occurred under his tenure as a piece of evidence suggesting deregulation. Good grief.

Tax income has declined, government spending declined until Obama took office, the bargaining power of labor has taken a nose-dive, and private sector profits have skyrocketed. Now our politics are being controlled by private sector money. Sure sounds to me like the government has reduced its control over businesses, right?

But no, you're going to focus on dumb shit like the nominal # of regulatory pages compared to 1930, in spite of our population tripling, a radical reformation of our way of life, and the fact that something intended to have the net effect of deregulation may nonetheless be written in legislature as a law.

[Ahldagor]

you idiots arguing and not bringing up the slow move towards fascism the country is undergoing.

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rand was part of the beginning. the objectivist mindset is like that of the futurist. they're only separated by an ocean. in order to get the people on your side you have to convince them that they're smart enough to think on their own while championing what you've taught them. gov policy has been reverting to the guilded age since reagan masqueraded as the healer of nixon. so who's the mckinley to get shot while the second teddy roosevelt waits?

[Nuggie]

Originally Posted by fadetree [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ayn had her point. Took it WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too far, but its a mistake to totally ignore her. Very little in life is completely true or completely false. Socialism has its points too.

The thing that Ayn had to say that I most agreed with is that it is a form of enslavement to institutionally give things to people who didn't earn them. Liberal white folks dealing perpetual welfare checks have done more to destroy urban culture than anything else. It's a win-win for the establishment, not only do you get to look like you're a good guy by 'helping', you also get their votes. Sweet.

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Same ideology applies to welfare.

[Orruar]

Originally Posted by Lune [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Lies, lies, and more lies.

Seriously, nobody is going to read your posts (as if anyone did already) if you just continue to lie nonstop.

You posted several sets of data to try and support your argument and then get upset when I show that for the most part, the data was saying exactly the opposite of what you were claiming. Nobody is going to believe a word you say from here on, unless they've already made up their minds on the issue. So yes, in your echo chamber of left wing ideology, you're still the king. But nobody else give 2 shits about someone who can't take the time to look at their own data before posting and claiming it says the opposite of what it does.

[Lune]

Originally Posted by fadetree [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Ayn had her point. Took it WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY too far, but its a mistake to totally ignore her. Very little in life is completely true or completely false. Socialism has its points too.

The thing that Ayn had to say that I most agreed with is that it is a form of enslavement to institutionally give things to people who didn't earn them. Liberal white folks dealing perpetual welfare checks have done more to destroy urban culture than anything else. It's a win-win for the establishment, not only do you get to look like you're a good guy by 'helping', you also get their votes. Sweet.

Originally Posted by Nuggie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Same ideology applies to welfare.

Believe it or not, welfare is not an exclusively liberal thing. Read up on agricultural subsidies and farm bills, it's a very right-wing thing. We pay $20 billion a year to farmers to help them get by. Additionally, things like medicare are bipartisan enterprises. Why don't those lazy fucking geezers get a job?

[Kekephee]

Originally Posted by Nuggie [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime. Same ideology applies to welfare.

One's ability to fish isn't directly influenced by the fact that one was born in a poverty-stricken neighborhood with a lot of crime and a terrible school system. It's real easy to say "pull yourself up by your bootstraps!" when you didn't have to drop out of school to sell crack on the corner when you were 13 to help your family because your dad can't get a job because he dropped out of school to sell crack when he was 13. Which is obviously a wild example that isn't going to be "the story" for the majority of welfare recipients, and I would never claim it as such, but it is a reality that more people face every year than I, personally, am comfortable with.