Do Libertarians Have a Death Wish?

[jriggenbach]

In my post, I pointed out that these military interventions have absolutely nothing to do with making the price of gasoline cheaper.

Martin,

As far as I can tell, this is an opinion.

You want me to take it as fact?

I know a little, not much, but a tittle about the secondary oil market from having watched it up close. This was outside the USA, granted, but I was involved with real players.

What I have seen doesn't align with your opinion. Nor is it as simple as you are putting it. But essentially, the following is true--when the bribes flow and the dictators in oil countries are killing their folks with USA support, we get long stretches of pretty cheap and stable gasoline prices.

About whether Objectivist this or Objectivists that, I don't play that us-against-them game. I thought I have made that clear over several years posting online and running one of the most renegade outside-the-box sites on Objectivism on the Internet. Also, I am not a friend of Neocon policies like several prominent Objectivists are, and I have been open about my disagreements, so I have no reason to defend them.

Nor do I play the one wrong justifies another game.

Sorry.

I am of the same opinion as before for the reasons I gave.

Michael

I know that wiggling, squirming, and retreat into meaningless rhetorical flourishes like "us-against-them game" and "one wrong justifies another game" were not really what you were hoping for here, Martin. But in all honesty, what else could you have expected?

My congratulations for your usual eloquence and my condolences for what it led to. (At least we didn't have to sit through any incoherent rambling about "haters" or "bullies.")

JR

[Brant Gaede]

Most oil production is in the hands of foreign governments. These governments are generally not adept at exploration and development. Mexico is a prime example. They block out oil companies that are competent in these endeavors. Private oil companies tend to be great beneficiaries of crony capitalism further muddying the waters. Consequently we are probably paying a higher price for gas than if it were a global free market.

Basically United States intervention in the Middle East has been a crock. First the U.S. gave its good-guy/bad-guy dictator Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait and then launched the first Gulf War when he did just that. 9/11 very possibly grew out of that context and the context of strong support of Israel. Without saying the latter is right or wrong, said support injected and injects the U.S. into Israel's continuous war state so 9/11 shouldn't have been a big surprise, especially after the earlier attempt to bring down a WTC tower. More stupid wars followed. The one in Iraq has the U.S. a trillion bucks down. The one in Afghanistan is the worst of all. The U.S. is manufacturing its enemies by the gross for several generations to come and destabilizing the most dangerous area of the world. A case can be made for going into that horrible place and kicking Taliban ass a decade ago, but not for sticking around for this state of perpetual war that makes us feel like we're living not in the world of Atlas Shrugged but 1984.

--Brant

American but not a United Statesian

[sjw]

Most oil production is in the hands of foreign governments. These governments are generally not adept at exploration and development. Mexico is a prime example. They block out oil companies that are competent in these endeavors. Private oil companies tend to be great beneficiaries of crony capitalism further muddying the waters. Consequently we are probably paying a higher price for gas than if it were a global free market.

Basically United States intervention in the Middle East has been a crock. First the U.S. gave its good-guy/bad-guy dictator Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Kuwait and then launched the first Gulf War when he did just that. 9/11 very possibly grew out of that context and the context of strong support of Israel. Without saying the latter is right or wrong, said support injected and injects the U.S. into Israel's continuous war state so 9/11 shouldn't have been a big surprise, especially after the earlier attempt to bring down a WTC tower. More stupid wars followed. The one in Iraq has the U.S. a trillion bucks down. The one in Afghanistan is the worst of all. The U.S. is manufacturing its enemies by the gross for several generations to come and destabilizing the most dangerous area of the world. A case can be made for going into that horrible place and kicking Taliban ass a decade ago, but not for sticking around for this state of perpetual war that makes us feel like we're living not in the world of Atlas Shrugged but 1984.

--Brant

American but not a United Statesian

On what basic moral theory do Objectivists advocate taking money from taxpayers to support various charity cases around the world? It seems to me that our foreign policy is altruistic at best and at worst: either we are altruistically helping people, or we are altruistically forcing them to help us (the latter is called "a self-interested foreign policy"). It's all based on sacrifice. And yet Objectivists stand firmly behind it. I don't see how any Objectivist can be supporting an interventionist foreign policy based on their own self-professed principles. They should be saying approximately what Ron Paul says, but with a stronger philosophic argument.

Peikoff says "they stole our oil!" Well, no, that's not "our" oil, it was some businessman's oil, who decided to build oil wells in a risky place. Why shouldn't the businessman take the full risk? Why should US taxpayers bail him out? As they like to say: "Blank-out."

This stuff isn't rocket science. As far as I can tell, Objectivists are philosophically deranged and consequently, psychologically insane. They take the idea of cognitive dissonance to breathtakingly new heights. But I'm willing to hear evidence to the contrary.

Shayne

-If you want to help free people from foreign dictatorship, fine, but it's immoral to force others to help, which only turns your own government into a dictatorship.

Edited April 22, 2011 by sjw

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I know that wiggling, squirming, and retreat into meaningless rhetorical flourishes like "us-against-them game" and "one wrong justifies another game" were not really what you were hoping for here, Martin.

Jeff,

Could you be so kind as to shed some light on what he was hoping for?

Inquiring minds seek enlightenment.

Michael

[jriggenbach]

I know that wiggling, squirming, and retreat into meaningless rhetorical flourishes like "us-against-them game" and "one wrong justifies another game" were not really what you were hoping for here, Martin.

Jeff,

Could you be so kind as to shed some light on what he was hoping for?

Inquiring minds seek enlightenment.

Michael

I think you could describe it as acknowledgement of simple truth, or something like that. But I'll say no more about it. I'm an extremely unkind person, as you know.

JR

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

On what basic moral theory do Objectivists advocate taking money from taxpayers to support various charity cases around the world? It seems to me that our foreign policy is altruistic at best and at worst: either we are altruistically helping people, or we are altruistically forcing them to help us (the latter is called "a self-interested foreign policy"). It's all based on sacrifice.

Shayne,

This wasn't the intention behind the policy. Altruism looks good as a cause for a while, but the more I have studied this, the more I have seen something far more complicated.

The policy of the USA giving out massive amounts of foreign aid all over the world was a kind of trade-off for dollarizing foreign contracts between nations as set in the first Bretton Woods convention. The moral purpose was to keep an eye on other countries economically so that nothing like WWII ever happened again. Especially since atomic weapons had been used with such devastation.

After all, a country needs foreign trade to arm itself enough to attack other countries. If all countries have to trade in dollars with each other, the USA had a good source of forced intelligence. Not great, but it was something. Don't forget that back then, there was no Internet.

So the intent was not really altruism. I believe the intent was good at root.

The problem has been that crony capitalism has taken over the process (how could it not with that kind of set-up?) and the USA government ended up over the years giving taxpayer dollars in order for countries to make informal quid pro quo tradeoffs of favoring certain USA corporations within their borders.

Note that many companies that deal with the government also make weapons. You need wars to consume those products.

I say if it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it's a duck. People seek power to bully others and get their mitts on unearned personal gain.

To me, altruism as a moral cause is, at best, a propaganda tool that is used to camouflage this process, but I don't see it used by the government often enough, nor with enough competence, to say it is the main cause. (The government uses it far better in domestic social issues like healthcare.) Basically, once a new process of funding gets a precedent through a generally obscure government proceeding, bureaucratic lethargy (or mental laziness) is the moral cause I see that maintains it from the public's end.

USA taxpayers are not very informed about this stuff and when they start becoming so, they get bored. Now with the budget exploding, they are getting concerned, but I don't see altruism anywhere near the operating principles. The irresponsibility and manipulation of politicians and crony capitalists (including a variation called NGO's--non-governmental organizations) using lobbyists as a main tool seems more like it. Productive people don't put up with this because of altruism--not even sanction of the victim. From what I see, they put up with it because, despite being an irritation, it is too complicated and boring to bother with.

There are countless private charities in the USA--especially ones from religious organizations--that operate in foreign countries. Those, I believe, have altruism at root. People actually think about the ones they help and think of themselves as virtuous when they give to these charities. And I do not oppose this since it is all voluntary. I see nothing wrong with helping poor folks if you choose to do it.

So, when dealing with altruism, I believe it is far more effective to expose it as a propaganda tool when it is used as one than to take it to the logical consequence that many Objectivists do of saying that helping poor folks is evil.

One of the good things I am noticing about the Atlas Shrugged movie is that the public blurring of productive businessmen with crony capitalists is becoming less blurred and this stuff is starting to be discussed by the mainstream. It had already started during the Bush years with Haliburton being help up by the left as an example, but now folks are looking at GE, Google, and companies like that when they get close ties with the government.

The is a very good thing. But once again, I don't see alturism at the root of the evil with these companies. And I don't see it used as a propaganda tool very much by them to justify their government privileges.

Michael

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

I think you could describe it as acknowledgement of simple truth, or something like that. But I'll say no more about it. I'm an extremely unkind person, as you know.

Jeff,

Oh, you cruel, cruel man!

If you don't enlighten me, that means you are on the side of the bad guys who want to impose ignorance on all of us!

Shame on you!

(There. Am I starting to get this rhetorical process right? God knows I hope for so much...)

Michael

[Selene]

Michael and JR:

I have to say that I have observed a much more civil atmosphere here on OL over the last few days.

I wonder why?

Now here even you two the "hater caller" and the self described master of incivility are so...

so...

civil to each other.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam.

JR's good people.

I think it's a shame he's wrong.

Michael

[Selene]

Adam.

JR's good people.

I think it's a shame he's wrong.

Michael

At first, my normal defence mechanisms flashed when he would place one of his biting remarks into a thread, but his intelligence, knowledge and biting sense of humor far outweighed any personal annoyance at his barbs.

Especially, when some of them were quite accurate.

Adam

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Adam,

Isn't it a shame we can suddenly stay on topic and still run intelligent humor?

Hmmmmm...

Is there cause and effect with incivility, I wonder, I wonder?

Michael

[Martin Radwin]

In my post, I pointed out that these military interventions have absolutely nothing to do with making the price of gasoline cheaper.

Martin,

As far as I can tell, this is an opinion.

You want me to take it as fact?

I know a little, not much, but a tittle about the secondary oil market from having watched it up close. This was outside the USA, granted, but I was involved with real players.

What I have seen doesn't align with your opinion. Nor is it as simple as you are putting it. But essentially, the following is true--when the bribes flow and the dictators in oil countries are killing their folks with USA support, we get long stretches of pretty cheap and stable gasoline prices.

As I've previously pointed out, oil and gasoline prices are quite high now, so all of these multiple wars presently being fought by the U.S. government don't seem to have provided us with the utopia of cheap gasoline. In fact, gasoline prices are near record highs.

As to your speculation about gasoline prices in an ideal laissez-faire marketplace, there is obviously no way to establish this empirically, since this is about as opposite from the actual situation in the world as we can get. But Brant (in post #27) provided some good reasons why, in such a truly free marketplace, oil and gasoline prices would probably be lower. And in addition to the cost of oil, one must also factor in the cost of these wars and military occupations, which are now costing Americans trillions of dollars.

But, again, let's assume, hypothetically, that you are right, and that the U.S. government getting into bed with dictators has lowered oil and gasoline prices. Suppose that the U.S. government were to end all foreign aid, close down all military bases, and end all wars. Suppose that it were to adopt a strict policy of neutrality and non-interference in the affairs of all other nations. Now suppose, as a result of this, that oil prices were to double, leading to roughly a doubling of gasoline prices.

If this were to be the result, would you support such a laissez-faire policy? Or would you insist that the U.S. government must maintain its wars, its occupations, its military bases, its aid to foreign dictators, in order to keep oil prices lower? If you would support present U.S. government policy based on keeping oil prices lower, how would you morally justify such a position? Or do cheap oil prices trump all moral justification, such that it's okay to support such a policy on strictly utilitarian grounds, despite its immorality? I'm essentially repeating the question that I posed in my previous posts, in a slightly different form. How many innocent foreigners is it okay for the U.S. government to kill in its wars and military occupations in order to hypothetically keep oil prices low? How many innocent foreigners must live under brutal, U.S. government supported dictatorships in order to hypothetically keep oil prices low?

About whether Objectivist this or Objectivists that, I don't play that us-against-them game. I thought I have made that clear over several years posting online and running one of the most renegade outside-the-box sites on Objectivism on the Internet. Also, I am not a friend of Neocon policies like several prominent Objectivists are, and I have been open about my disagreements, so I have no reason to defend them.

Nor do I play the one wrong justifies another game.

Sorry.

I am of the same opinion as before for the reasons I gave.

Michael

Why am I not surprised that your opinion has not changed as a result of my arguments? My main purpose in posting here is not to convince anyone of anything, since I realize that this almost never happens. It is just to speak the truth as I see it, and to refute positions that I see as both ill-informed and as morally unacceptable. At best, I can hope that maybe a few people reading these posts might just stop to consider the arguments I am making. But I'm ultimately just doing it for my own enjoyment.

Martin

[Martin Radwin]

In my post, I pointed out that these military interventions have absolutely nothing to do with making the price of gasoline cheaper.

Martin,

As far as I can tell, this is an opinion.

You want me to take it as fact?

I know a little, not much, but a tittle about the secondary oil market from having watched it up close. This was outside the USA, granted, but I was involved with real players.

What I have seen doesn't align with your opinion. Nor is it as simple as you are putting it. But essentially, the following is true--when the bribes flow and the dictators in oil countries are killing their folks with USA support, we get long stretches of pretty cheap and stable gasoline prices.

About whether Objectivist this or Objectivists that, I don't play that us-against-them game. I thought I have made that clear over several years posting online and running one of the most renegade outside-the-box sites on Objectivism on the Internet. Also, I am not a friend of Neocon policies like several prominent Objectivists are, and I have been open about my disagreements, so I have no reason to defend them.

Nor do I play the one wrong justifies another game.

Sorry.

I am of the same opinion as before for the reasons I gave.

Michael

I know that wiggling, squirming, and retreat into meaningless rhetorical flourishes like "us-against-them game" and "one wrong justifies another game" were not really what you were hoping for here, Martin. But in all honesty, what else could you have expected?

My congratulations for your usual eloquence and my condolences for what it led to. (At least we didn't have to sit through any incoherent rambling about "haters" or "bullies.")

JR

Jeff,

Thank you very much for your compliment on my writing. I didn't really expect it to lead anywhere, and in that respect I'm not disappointed. I just felt that the position Michael had laid out was so absurd and, in addition, immoral, that it just required some kind of refutation. I feel better for having written it.

Martin

[Michael Stuart Kelly]

Why am I not surprised that your opinion has not changed as a result of my arguments?

Martin,

Here's possibly a reason right here in your very post.

As to your speculation about gasoline prices in an ideal laissez-faire marketplace...

I made no such speculation.

Read that again and see if it makes sense to you.

I made no such speculation.

I think that is a wonderful reason not to be surprised that I don't change my opinion due to what you write. I find it hard to take these kinds of "arguments" seriously. (There's a bunch of other stuff, too, but I don't feel like quoting it all.)

This isn't the first time you've done this, either. From what I've read, you constantly do that stuff. (I even recall doing side-by-side quote comparisons in the past to make this point. I would need to look for those posts, but it might be easier to do it again with fresh material if needed. There's plenty to choose from, so it is pretty easy.)

I like you and I don't want to get irritated at you, despite mis-attribution crap being a natural irritant. So rather that constantly ask you to read more carefully, correct you and demonstrate that I didn't say or mean XXX, YYY, or ZZZ, get sidetracked into tangents and/or defending myself against being a Neocon or a fundy-like Objectivist and insinuations like that, I just often don't pay much attention to what you write.

This time I did.

As a rule, I don't mind disagreement. But, generally, I do mind outright claiming someone said something they didn't so you can get up on a soapbox and start yelling about what's in your head.

Jeff popped up and said this stuff is stellar reasoning (his words were "usual eloquence"), so he apparently knows why you do it, but he ain't saying it to me. He mumbled something about some simple truth or other and he says he's unkind...

Michael

EDIT: I see you're starting to yap about morality. Does lying about what people say fall into your moral system? Inquiring minds so desperately seek enlightenment, especially if it can be presented with "usual eloquence" ...

EDIT 2: If I'm flip with this poster, it's because I've always been against the USA government getting in bed with foreign dictators and waging oil wars. God knows I have written tons of stuff about it. Then this dude asks me if I support it and talks about morality. Kerrrriiiist! (Actually, it's kinda funny... )

[Brant Gaede]

Fer the record: I don't care who's wrong; I'm right.

--Brant

go up sweet Jesus!