"Sorry Libertarians, Capitalism Requires Government" by Binswanger - Rebutted! [vid]


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Kyrel,

I have an opinion that is different than yours, but on form.

Qua form, there are many forms of communication. After studying this a lot (but I feel I've only scratched the surface), I have turned my current focus toward outcomes.

And I have concluded that highlighting actions is far more powerful to get outcomes than name-calling.

When people say one thing and do another, what they do is almost always the better indicator of their true intentions. Most audiences know it, too. But what people do is not always clear to audiences in our remote-control ADD culture, especially online.

If your communication makes what your target does clear to the reader, you don't even have to show the lack of consistency between word and deed. Audiences may not read carefully (from sheer info overload), but in my experience, they are not stupid.

I have not always thought like that. Now I do.

Lots of study, observation and some experience (I only started recently) lead me on the path of prioritizing outcomes over rhetorical posture.

I only see name calling give concrete outcomes (of what you really want) when a mob can be lathered up. Otherwise, this tactic is not very effective. It produces flame wars and other distractions.

Your mileage may vary.

Michael -- A bit obscure! I think you have something to say, but your chosen words are indirect and rounbabout. Interpreting as best I can, I think truth is the most powerful force in the universe. People should always try to state the truth about various individuals, institutions, ideas, etc. They should fulsomely give their reasons and cite their evidence for their claims. If it's not overly difficult, truth-seekers and public educators should try to be persuasive and entertaining in the process. But the evil, loathsome, enemy, destructive, religious "Objectivists" -- along with their practices and beliefs -- need to be noted for what they are. It isn't really name-calling to correctly identify their nature and accurately define them.

He's suggesting that you cut out the name-calling or the reader will focus on that instead of why you name-called. Turns off the brain. It might make you feel good, but that's all. What you said prior to that will be forgotten and ignored and the reader will more and more gloss over what you post then stop reading you entirely out of boredom.

--Brant

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Michael -- A bit obscure! I think you have something to say, but your chosen words are indirect and rounbabout.

He's suggesting that you cut out the name-calling or the reader will focus on that instead of why you name-called. Turns off the brain. It might make you feel good, but that's all. What you said prior to that will be forgotten and ignored and the reader will more and more gloss over what you post then stop reading you entirely out of boredom.

Kyrel,

Actually my words were quite clear.

Brant got my meaning perfectly.

It's one thing to roar and thump your chest in public and feel the testosterone surge. It's quite another to see if anybody cares.

I don't suggest you eliminate name-calling. But like any effect, the more your use it, the less effect it has.

(The term in neuroscience is habituation.)

I suggest you learn rhetoric and persuasion. Nah... let's go whole hog. Learn how to give your name-calling the old Hollywood build-up as you make your logical case: suspense, anticipation, piling on pity and fear as in Aristotle, reveals, reversals, curiosity, foreshadowing, and a lot of other techniques so it will sting for real when you say it at the moment of catharsis as you then lead people to a sense of awe and wonder.

That persuades.

Ayn Rand knew how to do this. You can learn it, too. It's a learnable skill and it works.

Right now the names you sling around are not even an itch to your target or to the audience. Maybe one or two who agree with you think your message is effective, but that's all. If that's good enough for you, OK.

It's your life. Your choice.

Michael

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Yes very true!

The internetz Butthurt report on the other hand will live on forever!!!!

All kidding aside though the left has quite successfully used comedy as a weapon for many years. They have honed it to razor sharpness through years of practice. They even get rich doing it!

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I can get along with most Anarcho - Capitalist. (chatted with some on forums) But what I find strange is most straight Anarchist I know are fond of Socialism. I've read a few books where they teach Anarchist techniques but then promotes socialism in their political philosophies. What the hell? Can anyone explain this? I can understand Anarcho - Capitalist point of view, disband the government and replace with a Capitalist system.....But to replace with a socialist system seems to be hypocritical.....

They don't conceive of socialism in the same way that you do. When those on the revolutionary left say "socialism", what we hear is "government control of the economy" but what they actually mean is "direct democratic control of all businesses by workers and/or the citizenry." More specifically, what they mean is, rather than working for a boss who owns the business, you would be a part-owner of that business and have a say in how it is run through voting. This is a purely economic notion, and the state has nothing to do with it. Hence why they can say they are against the state but for socialism. (This is also why you will hear of such apparent oxymorons as "free-market socialism")

The reason we think that socialism entails government control of the economy is first because of the communists, and secondly because of the reformist left. You see, the communists believed that one could not simply establish socialism in the above sense immediately after a revolution, as anarchists thought. Instead, the proletariat would first have to seize control of the state and establish a "dictatorship of the proletariat". In Marx's time "dictatorship" did not have the connotations it does today. What this meant was that the proletariat would control the state and wield it in its own interests, it does not necessarily entail a literal dictatorship although historically this has been the case (hence the identification of socialism and communism with dictatorship and the disparity of meaning between the terms as they are used by actual revolutionary leftists and their opponents). This is opposed to the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie" whereby capitalists control the state and use it for their own ends, even when the state itself is a republic. They then hoped that this would eventually lead to socialism as defined in the first paragraph.

After WW2 and the cold war, the reformist socialists showed up. These are the people we think of when we use the term "socialist". Their big idea is that they can get to socialism without a revolution. Instead, they want to "reform" capitalism by participating in the current government and regulating the economy to favor the proletariat.

I hope this clears up the confusion.

SOURCE: Years and years of talking to these people.

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They don't conceive of socialism in the same way that you do. When those on the revolutionary left say "socialism", what we hear is "government control of the economy" but what they actually mean is "direct democratic control of all businesses by workers and/or the citizenry." More specifically, what they mean is, rather than working for a boss who owns the business, you would be a part-owner of that business and have a say in how it is run through voting. This is a purely economic notion, and the state has nothing to do with it. Hence why they can say they are against the state but for socialism. (This is also why you will hear of such apparent oxymorons as "free-market socialism")

This sounds in part like a modern public corporation, at least on the face of it--except for the actual workers. In real life, of course, the shareholders are mostly run over by management.

--Brant

it also sounds like Starnesville

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This sounds in part like a modern public corporation, at least on the face of it--except for the actual workers. In real life, of course, the shareholders are mostly run over by management.

--Brant

it also sounds like Starnesville

It's more like a cooperative.

The cooperative movement has been fueled globally by ideas of economic democracy. Economic democracy is a socioeconomic philosophy that suggests an expansion of decision-making power from a small minority of corporate shareholders to a larger majority of public stakeholders. There are many different approaches to thinking about and building economic democracy. Both Marxism and anarchism, for example, have been influenced by utopian socialism, which was based on voluntary cooperation, without recognition of class conflict. Anarchists are committed to libertarian socialism and have focused on local organization, including locally managed cooperatives, linked through confederations of unions, cooperatives and communities. Marxists, who as socialists have likewise held and worked for the goal of democratizing productive and reproductive relationships, often placed a greater strategic emphasis on confronting the larger scales of human organization. As they viewed the capitalist class to be politically, militarily and culturally mobilized for the purpose of maintaining an exploitable working class, they fought in the early 20th century to appropriate from the capitalist class the society's collective political capacity in the form of the state, either through democratic socialism, or through what came to be known as Leninism. Though they regard the state as an unnecessarily oppressive institution, Marxists considered appropriating national and international-scale capitalist institutions and resources (such as the state) to be an important first pillar in creating conditions favorable to solidaristic economies.[15][16] With the declining influence of the USSR after the 1960s, socialist strategies pluralized, though economic democratizers have not as yet established a fundamental challenge to the hegemony of global neoliberal capitalism.

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Okay. What's the role of force?

--Brant

According to most socialists, force should have no role in human society. They believe that the elimination of class conflict and economic prosperity under socialism will end the need for war and crime (and hence the state).

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Okay. What's the role of force?

--Brant

According to most socialists, force should have no role in human society. They believe that the elimination of class conflict and economic prosperity under socialism will end the need for war and crime (and hence the state).

When I was a kid I dreamed of beautiful naked native women on south seas' islands.

--Brant

maybe I should go--it is my destiny

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Starnesville?

Sounds more like utopia through human engineering.

Funny how this always starts--after total power is gained--with a purge of the humans who don't fit...

And all they do afterward is say the folks who did the massacres did it wrong. The REAL utopia and human engineering is like this...

And off they go again...

I don't think any amount of blood will be real enough for people who think like this to admit that the cause and effect of these atrocities lies in their not accepting human nature.

Michael

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[Michael is] suggesting that you cut out the name-calling or the reader will focus on that instead of why you name-called. Turns off the brain. It might make you feel good, but that's all. What you said prior to that will be forgotten and ignored and the reader will more and more gloss over what you post then stop reading you entirely out of boredom.

--Brant

Brant -- My thanks for the helpful suggestions regarding readership popularity. But I may not be much able to heed them. I write for my own sake. And I have the most fun seeking the truth. I have far less interest and enjoyment conveying it to the general public. Often I just keep it to myself, for my own profit and pleasure. As for persuading people that I actually have the truth -- that's far less fun still. And when it comes to successfully convincing the indifferent, ignorant, sleazy hoi polloi, average Joe, and man in the street regarding the accuracy and worth of my various intellectual claims and pursuits -- I have no interest in and derive no fun from that at all.

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Kyrel,

Actually my words were quite clear.

Brant got my meaning perfectly.

It's one thing to roar and thump your chest in public and feel the testosterone surge. It's quite another to see if anybody cares.

I don't suggest you eliminate name-calling. But like any effect, the more your use it, the less effect it has.

(The term in neuroscience is habituation.)

I suggest you learn rhetoric and persuasion. Nah... let's go whole hog. Learn how to give your name-calling the old Hollywood build-up as you make your logical case: suspense, anticipation, piling on pity and fear as in Aristotle, reveals, reversals, curiosity, foreshadowing, and a lot of other techniques so it will sting for real when you say it at the moment of catharsis as you then lead people to a sense of awe and wonder.

That persuades.

Ayn Rand knew how to do this. You can learn it, too. It's a learnable skill and it works.

Right now the names you sling around are not even an itch to your target or to the audience. Maybe one or two who agree with you think your message is effective, but that's all. If that's good enough for you, OK.

It's your life. Your choice.

Michael

Michael -- While I appreciate the helpful nature of your remarks -- which evidently had far more clarity than I realized! -- I may not be able to follow the advice all that much. I don't seek popularity per se. I write for the intellectual and moral elite. Not the masses. Maybe Ayn Rand was a populist; or at least tried to be. But I'm not, and don't want to be. My intent is to be the strongest liberal theorist on the planet. I want to out-think anyone and everyone at TAS, ARI, and other neoliberal venues. You can pretty well judge my abilities on this, and my level of understanding of nature, society, and the individual, by reading my recent book. There seems to be a fair amount of innovations and insights there. I think I know what other neoliberals know. But I don't think they know what I know.

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Okay. What's the role of force?

--Brant

According to most socialists, force should have no role in human society. They believe that the elimination of class conflict and economic prosperity under socialism will end the need for war and crime (and hence the state).

"economic prosperity" under socialism......

A contradiction in terms.

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Michael -- While I appreciate the helpful nature of your remarks -- which evidently had far more clarity than I realized! -- I may not be able to follow the advice all that much. I don't seek popularity per se. I write for the intellectual and moral elite. Not the masses. Maybe Ayn Rand was a populist; or at least tried to be. But I'm not, and don't want to be. My intent is to be the strongest liberal theorist on the planet. I want to out-think anyone and everyone at TAS, ARI, and other neoliberal venues. You can pretty well judge my abilities on this, and my level of understanding of nature, society, and the individual, by reading my recent book. There seems to be a fair amount of innovations and insights there. I think I know what other neoliberals know. But I don't think they know what I know.

The NASCAR intellectual?

--Brant

you come here to call people names?

I'll read your book in a few months

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Michael -- Thanks! I love all feedback and criticism, no matter how negative. I don't claim to be infallible or omniscient in my reasoning and argumentation. Anyone who can point out my errors, I'm grateful to. Of course, I'm always hopeful for a bit of thoughtfulness and substance in the various analyses that different people make! But anyone from Objectivist Living who posts a review of my book to Amazon will get a free copy (autographed, if you like). :smile:

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