Elizabeth Warren and the Social Contract...

[Selene]

Here she spoke this last weekend on one of her walking tours. Her analysis of the history of a person like Hank Rearden is ...well you watch the video.

As she scolds the industrialist with her carping, pedantic and effete statements regarding "fair taxation," wherein she explains that no one got rich in this country on "his own!" Being the scold that she is, she lashes out with the argument that "YOU [evil scum industrialist]" moved your goods over the roads that we paid for!

Hmmm, so I guess the industrialist that built the trucks, the industrialist that drilled the oil, refined it and put it into the asphalt, gasoline, etc. does not count. See all productive wealth comes from government and taxation. I think that she leaves a wide open argument for anarchism, private toll roads, competing protection agencies and lots more. If I were running Scott Brown's campaign or the Libertarian campaign, I would have a truth squad follow her around with this video on an I-pad and refute her causation linkages about roads, etc. with the clear alternatives that the free market could provide without her darling government.

My favorite part is at 1:26 when she talks about the "marauding bands" that would take away all your production from the factory that you built!

http://youtu.be/htX2usfqMEs

Her analysis of the social contract at the end is also quite fetching.

Here is her campaign website...http://elizabethwarren.com/splash

In the campaign video, at 00:46 seconds, she talks about "...growing up on the ragged edge of the middle class..."

Anyone have a clue on what that means?

Here is here Wiki background in government:

TARP oversight

On November 14, 2008, Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.^[20] The Panel releases monthly oversight reports that evaluate the government bailout and related programs.^[21]

The Panel's monthly reports under Warren's leadership covered foreclosure mitigation, consumer and small business lending, commercial real estate, AIG, bank stress tests, the impact of TARP on the financial markets, government guarantees, the automotive industry, and many other topics. The Panel has also released special reports on financial regulatory reform and farm loans. For each report, Warren released a video on the Congressional Oversight Panel's website explaining key findings. All reports and videos are available at cop.senate.gov.

In her role as Chair of the Panel, Warren testified many times before House and Senate committees on financial issues.^[22]

In an interview at Newsweek, December 7, 2009, titled "Reining in, and Reigning Over, Wall Street" Elizabeth Warren was asked: "Congress is trying to reform financial regulation, and it can get a little abstract. Where should people focus?"

She responded: “ To restore some basic sanity to the financial system, we need two central changes: fix broken consumer-credit markets and end guarantees for the big players that threaten our entire economic system. If we get those two key parts right, we can still dial the rest of the regulation up and down as needed. But if we don't get those two right, I think the game is over. I hate to sound alarmist, but that's how I feel about this. ”

On July 29, 2011, she left her role with the agency to return to academic life at Harvard Law School. Her departing address indicated how she first became involved: “ Four years ago, I submitted an article to Democracy Journal that argued for a new government agency called the Financial Product Safety Commission. I threw myself into that piece because I felt strongly that a new consumer agency would make the credit markets work better for American families and strengthen the economic security of the middle class." Warren wrote, "I leave this agency, but not this fight . . . the issues we deal with -- a middle class that has been squeezed and business models built on tricks and traps -- are deeply personal to me, and they always will be.^[23]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Warren

[George H. Smith]

Rush Limbaugh did a good commentary on all this yesterday. He correctly observed that Warren's comments are the best presentation of the philosophic foundations of Obama-style progressivism that we are ever likely to hear.

Ghs

[merjet]

Transcript of Limbaugh's commentary.

[anthony]

Whew...she is truly terrifying; next step, the Politburo and Central Planning..

This is so relevant to my country - and I'm really very sorry I have to point it out, but this is exactly the brand of Marxist-progressivism that we have moved in to. Just who is copying whom?

"Pay it forwards", "you owe the people", entitled collectivism.

Tony

[sjw]

My sense is that neither conservatives nor libertarians are up to the task of refuting her. So while you may hate what she says, those who agree with her are probably not going to be swayed.

At the center of the problem is not the social contract, but rather, property ownership, and the tangled web that has been woven by the system as it has actually existed. When someone steals from you, you have the right to retrieve your property. When someone attacks you and prevents you from acting, you have the right to receive compensation for what you lost from the attack. So which pensioners deserve part ownership in the infrastructure that was built on his back, and which pensioners were party to the crime of forcing him to build it? To switch to a purely libertarian world from what we have now, without dealing with this sort of issue in some sensible manner, would be grossly unjust.

Shayne

[Selene]

So which pensioners deserve part ownership in the infrastructure that was built on his back, and which pensioners were party to the crime of forcing him to build it?

Shayne

Shayne:

How are you using the word "pensioners" above?

Adam

[sjw]

Shayne:

How are you using the word "pensioners" above?

Adam

To refer to a group where there are conspicuous numbers of people where many are likely owed something from the current system due to what it extracted from them and prevented them from doing. But my remarks do not merely apply to them.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

My sense is that neither conservatives nor libertarians are up to the task of refuting her....

A libertarian novice could easily refute Warren. You may not be up to the task, but don't assume that others are not.

Ghs

[sjw]

My sense is that neither conservatives nor libertarians are up to the task of refuting her....

A libertarian novice could easily refute Warren. You may not be up to the task, but don't assume that others are not.

Ghs

You're all bluster and hot air. All we can count on from you is to hide your ignorant dogmas in a shroud of ad hominem. But go ahead. Refute Warren. Let's see what you've got.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

My sense is that neither conservatives nor libertarians are up to the task of refuting her....

A libertarian novice could easily refute Warren. You may not be up to the task, but don't assume that others are not. Ghs

You're all bluster and hot air. All we can count on from you is to hide your ignorant dogmas in a shroud of ad hominem. But go ahead. Refute Warren. Let's see what you've got. Shayne

The fact that you even think that Warren presents an "argument" in any logical sense does not speak well for you. She actually presents a string of assertions that are connected by nothing more than emotional associations.

If you disagree, if you think there is an argument somewhere, then summarize it for me and I will gladly refute it, since you are obviously unable to do so.

Ghs

[sjw]

The fact that you even think that Warren presents an "argument" in any logical sense does not speak well for you.

The fact that you can't do the philosophical detection required to discern her implicit premises does not speak well for you. Expecting you to refute those premises is expecting too much, but I did think I could count on you to do the basic philosophical detection.

And no, I'm not going to do your work for you, particularly given that my starting it above didn't seem to help you at all.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

The fact that you even think that Warren presents an "argument" in any logical sense does not speak well for you.

The fact that you can't do the philosophical detection required to discern her implicit premises does not speak well for you. Expecting you to refute those premises is expecting too much, but I did think I could count on you to do the basic philosophical detection. And no, I'm not going to do your work for you, particularly given that my starting it above didn't seem to help you at all. Shayne

LOL! Couldn't find an argument either, eh?

Ghs

[sjw]

LOL! Couldn't find an argument either, eh?

Ghs

"Either"? So you admit your ignorance. Thank you for conceding the only point I intended to make.

Shayne

[Roger Bissell]

George, just because Warren's diatribe was a string of informal fallacies doesn't mean it wasn't an argument. It was just a highly emotional, manipulative, shoddy argument. Real Lady Hitler crap. Forget Sarah and Hillary. If you blink, you may find that this broad has become America's first Fuhreress (?).

There were premises lurking back there, all right. Try collectivism, altruism, and statism, for starters! When you have high-octane stuff like that to fuel your spiels, you can sway a lot of people with very little formal logic to support them. And figuring out the right mix of facts and logic to counter them is ~not~ easy. If you're not careful, you can easily end up looking impractical, immoral, or both.

On a personal note: my wife and I had already suffered considerable indigestion earlier in the day, when we read the comments by the Democrat Party official from Palm Beach County, Florida saying that those who wanted to replace Obama next year were trying to destroy him and America, and thus that those people should be put in jail.

Then Warren popped up on the tube with her noxious rant. The only good thing about her is that she ~may~ be able to replace a worthless RINO Republican with someone who clearly, articulately reminds us every time she opens her mouth that there are monsters out there, and that we had better sharpen our logical, ideological, and rhetorical knives, if we want to survive.

REB

[George H. Smith]

George, just because Warren's diatribe was a string of informal fallacies doesn't mean it wasn't an argument. It was just a highly emotional, manipulative, shoddy argument. Real Lady Hitler crap. Forget Sarah and Hillary. If you blink, you may find that this broad has become America's first Fuhreress (?). There were premises lurking back there, all right. Try collectivism, altruism, and statism, for starters! When you have high-octane stuff like that to fuel your spiels, you can sway a lot of people with very little formal logic to support them. And figuring out the right mix of facts and logic to counter them is ~not~ easy. If you're not careful, you can easily end up looking impractical, immoral, or both. On a personal note: my wife and I had already suffered considerable indigestion earlier in the day, when we read the comments by the Democrat Party official from Palm Beach County, Florida saying that those who wanted to replace Obama next year were trying to destroy him and America, and thus that those people should be put in jail. Then Warren popped up on the tube with her noxious rant. The only good thing about her is that she ~may~ be able to replace a worthless RINO Republican with someone who clearly, articulately reminds us every time she opens her mouth that there are monsters out there, and that we had better sharpen our logical, ideological, and rhetorical knives, if we want to survive. REB

Warren presented an "argument" only in a rhetorical sense, not in a logical sense. All she did was to throw around a few examples that she knew would trigger certain emotions in her audience.

Consider her passing reference to a social contract," according to which we all have supposedly agreed to "pay forward," (I think this is the expression she uses). How does this bare assertion constitute a real argument? What social contract? What are its specific provisions? How and when did "we" agree to it? Blank out, as Rand would say.

Or consider her claim that a vast collective "we" somehow have rights to whatever a factory owner produces, since he uses the roads and other government services that we paid for via taxes. Well, the factory owner also paid taxes, so does this mean that he has a right to part of Warren's salary, since she uses the roads to get to work? Do I have a right to part of her income?

Insofar as any "refutation" of this conceptual chaos is needed, we need only point out that money coercively collected from us by the government has no bearing on our moral relationship to a private business. Moreover, we already benefit from a private factory by having access to goods that would otherwise be unavailable.

Ghs

[Brant Gaede]

My sense is that neither conservatives nor libertarians are up to the task of refuting her. So while you may hate what she says, those who agree with her are probably not going to be swayed.

At the center of the problem is not the social contract, but rather, property ownership, and the tangled web that has been woven by the system as it has actually existed. When someone steals from you, you have the right to retrieve your property. When someone attacks you and prevents you from acting, you have the right to receive compensation for what you lost from the attack. So which pensioners deserve part ownership in the infrastructure that was built on his back, and which pensioners were party to the crime of forcing him to build it? To switch to a purely libertarian world from what we have now, without dealing with this sort of issue in some sensible manner, would be grossly unjust.

Shayne

My social contract is you don't violate my rights and I don't violate yours, but the government has other ideas and needs to be brought to heel by understanding human rights and moving toward more and more freedom. This would require an educational and cultural shift away from the implicit idea that citizens are state property.

--Brant

[sjw]

Consider her passing reference to a social contract," according to which we all have supposedly agreed to "pay forward," (I think this is the expression she uses). How does this bare assertion constitute a real argument? What social contract? What are its specific provisions? How and when did "we" agree to it? Blank out, as Rand would say.

You're leaving out obvious implications of her statements, ones that would be perceived by those on her side of the argument, e.g. that you GHS uses the roads, that the roads (and other government services) are not YOUR property, and that you therefore owe something. Leaving obvious things out plays right into the enemy's hands.

Or consider her claim that a vast collective "we" somehow have rights to whatever a factory owner produces, since he uses the roads and other government services that we paid for via taxes. Well, the factory owner also paid taxes, so does this mean that he has a right to part of Warren's salary, since she uses the roads to get to work? Do I have a right to part of her income?

Warren pays taxes, so yes, the factory owner is effectively getting a share of her salary (if we presume the framework the statists are coming from). What is your point?

Insofar as any "refutation" of this conceptual chaos is needed, we need only point out that money coercively collected from us by the government has no bearing on our moral relationship to a private business. Moreover, we already benefit from a private factory by having access to goods that would otherwise be unavailable.

Actually, the majority of business activity is propped up in some manner or other by government interference, usually with the consent of the business owners themselves, so it's easy to argue that, morally, given the facts as they are (as opposed to your fantasy of how you'd like them to be), private businesses "owe" something. E.g., private businesses lobby to interfere with our right to build our own truly private cable/internet networks, and they interfere with our right to build things that happen to have been patented. So, morally speaking, we have some right to constrain and restrain them.

Think of an Atlas Shrugged where the villainous businessmen won. That's approximately where we are now. These villains owe something. The whole solution here can't merely be to unshackle them, on the principle that business should be unshackled. This principle is true, but it is very misguided to blindly apply it. In an important sense, many big business are merely a branch of the government, like the USPS, but a bit less tethered than that.

Shayne

[9thdoctor]

She should try cribbing from Python, and ratcheting down that imperious bitch persona a few notches.

[sjw]

My social contract is you don't violate my rights and I don't violate yours, but the government has other ideas and needs to be brought to heel by understanding human rights and moving toward more and more freedom. This would require an educational and cultural shift away from the implicit idea that citizens are state property.

--Brant

Yes, self-sovereignty is the core of the answer. The problem is that we're in a sort of Mexican standoff, with the left pointing a gun at the right, and vice versa, with each party having a valid aspect to their claims.

Solution: Free the wilderness, let the parties observe the many errors of their ways by showing them how it's done. They won't come around while there are guns pointed at their heads, but if we can convince them to let us leave the room, there's a chance. Nationalism interferes with this, but without rectifying that particular evil, every tactic is hopeless.

Shayne

- See Chapter 3 & 4.

[George H. Smith]

Or consider her claim that a vast collective "we" somehow have rights to whatever a factory owner produces, since he uses the roads and other government services that we paid for via taxes. Well, the factory owner also paid taxes, so does this mean that he has a right to part of Warren's salary, since she uses the roads to get to work? Do I have a right to part of her income?

Warren pays taxes, so yes, the factory owner is effectively getting a share of her salary (if we presume the framework the statists are coming from). What is your point?

Warren isn't merely contending that the factory owner should pay some taxes. Her point is that he should pay more taxes than most other people, because he uses roads and government services that "we" paid for with taxes. I pointed out that Warren's "argument" here would apply to herself and (by implication) to every other American who makes money, which means it has no special application to factory owners. (Warren doesn't use the term "capitalist," but that's when she means.)

I'm sorry if I didn't take you by the hand and lead you through every step. I assumed that if I pointed you in the right direction, you could make it the rest of the way on your own. Pay closer attention, Sonny Boy, and you might learn something.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Insofar as any "refutation" of this conceptual chaos is needed, we need only point out that money coercively collected from us by the government has no bearing on our moral relationship to a private business. Moreover, we already benefit from a private factory by having access to goods that would otherwise be unavailable.

Actually, the majority of business activity is propped up in some manner or other by government interference, usually with the consent of the business owners themselves, so it's easy to argue that, morally, given the facts as they are (as opposed to your fantasy of how you'd like them to be), private businesses "owe" something. E.g., private businesses lobby to interfere with our right to build our own truly private cable/internet networks, and they interfere with our right to build things that happen to have been patented. So, morally speaking, we have some right to constrain and restrain them.

You have added an additional layer that plays no role in Warren's argument, not even implicitly. My "fantasy" addressed her comments, not yours.

If you wish to construct your own argument that leads to conclusions similar to Warren's, feel free. And I will feel equally free to ignore it.

Ghs

[George H. Smith]

Consider her passing reference to a social contract," according to which we all have supposedly agreed to "pay forward," (I think this is the expression she uses). How does this bare assertion constitute a real argument? What social contract? What are its specific provisions? How and when did "we" agree to it? Blank out, as Rand would say.

You're leaving out obvious implications of her statements, ones that would be perceived by those on her side of the argument, e.g. that you GHS uses the roads, that the roads (and other government services) are not YOUR property, and that you therefore owe something. Leaving obvious things out plays right into the enemy's hands.

None of what you say has anything to do with Warren's imaginary social contract.

Moreover, you misunderstand Warren's point. She believes that "we" paid taxes for roads, etc., so we are the collective owners of public property. Each of us is therefore an owner, if a very minor capacity, of the roads; and "we" decide how our property should be used through a political process. Hence, if "we" decide that a factory owner owes us more for the use of our roads than he is currently paying in taxes, then "we" have a right to tax the factory owner more that we tax others.

This is standard progressive/socialist claptrap.

Ghs

[sjw]

Warren isn't merely contending that the factory owner should pay some taxes. Her point is that he should pay more taxes than most other people,

This is a silly analysis. There was much more to what she said than mere taxing rates. There was a moral fervor based in some sense on property rights premises -- that the factory owner doesn't own all the stuff he's using. And if you can't see and address what she's saying in moral terms (as opposed to mere quibbles about taxing rates) then you won't convince anyone.

Shayne

[sjw]

Moreover, you misunderstand Warren's point. She believes that "we" paid taxes for roads, etc., so we are the collective owners of public property. Each of us is therefore an owner, if a very minor capacity, of the roads; and "we" decide how our property should be used through a political process. Hence, if "we" decide that a factory owner owes us more for the use of our roads than he is currently paying in taxes, then "we" have a right to tax the factory owner more that we tax others.

This is standard progressive/socialist claptrap.

Ghs

As if this contradicts anything I've said. Your nonsense is really weak George, as per usual.

Shayne

[George H. Smith]

Warren isn't merely contending that the factory owner should pay some taxes. Her point is that he should pay more taxes than most other people,

This is a silly analysis. There was much more to what she said than mere taxing rates. There was a moral fervor based in some sense on property rights premises -- that the factory owner doesn't own all the stuff he's using. And if you can't see and address what she's saying in moral terms (as opposed to mere quibbles about taxing rates) then you won't convince anyone. Shayne

When did I ever say that higher tax rates was the only thing involved in what you charitably call Warren's "analysis"? You misrepresented one of her points, so I corrected you.

In point of fact, and as I said before, Warren gives no coherent analysis or argument. And, as I also said before, if you disagree, then summarize what you think her basic argument is. And I mean her "argument," not yours. So far you have not been able to understand even her basic points, so I have no confidence that you will be able to ferret out her "implicit" premises and work those into something that makes sense. But if you would like to give it a try, be my guest.

Ghs