The only proper purpose of a government

[nodoginnafight]

The period between the American Civil War and WW II are a symbol of Libertarian success huh?

Women couldn't vote
Jim Crow laws
the Klan
60 hour work weeks with no paid time off at all
Disease-ridden "company towns"
Workplace deaths and injuries
"natural" disasters like the Johnstown Flood (preventable if dam-building standards had been in place and enforced.)

So who exactly were these "the good ol' days" for?
how was unbrideled capitalism providing civil liberties? How was "the marketplace" providing for education, police/fire protection, upholding sanitation standards, providing roads ... ?

Misty-eyed dreams of the days of yore are typically romanticized. The reality wasn't quite as rosy.

 

[Doubletap]

Every gov. interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

 

[Koios]

Every gov. interference in the economy consists of giving an unearned benefit, extorted by force, to some men at the expense of others.

Damn that fucking Al Hamiton for creating a national currency!!!!

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That all sounds great, and a large part of me agrees. However, Ayn Rand's brand of libertarianism (or if you wish, her godless Objectivism) is one which takes no preventive measures whatsoever.

For example, the regulation of our food and drugs. Rand's minions are silent about doing anything preventive before you take food or medicine into your body, and only punishes the wicked after they have killed you with their poison for profit. As if the fear of punishment will stop evildoers. This is an attitude which is the epitome of gullibility and suffers from a profound ignorance of human nature and history.

There used to be this wonderful underground market in San Francisco where you could go and experience exotic food at reasonable prices. It was so good that it got favorable reviews in the New York Times, and was considered a tourist attraction, bringing in thousands of dollars every day it was open.

There was only one problem with it, it was unregulated. Not one vendor had a license, and this upset the state no end. They stepped in to correct the problem, and insisted that every vendor get a license, install proper kitchen and dining facilities, and basically regulated them out of business. They did, however, save exactly zero cases of food poisoning from improperly prepared and/or served food.

That's right, this place operated for years, serving hundreds of thousands of people with food prepared in unsanitary conditions, and no one ever reported anything,even indigestion, as a result.

Want to explain to me again about how no regulation is bad?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his"-Ayn Rand

Rand was clearly ignorant as to Constitutional case law and sound public policy; the pathetic libertarian fantasy of an 18th Century government administering a 21st Century First World industrialized super-power is naïve idiocy.

Libertarians don’t need a boat or plane to another country, their only salvation is a time machine set for the past.

The world does not revolve around case law or public policy, why the fuck should a fiction writer care about either one?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his"-Ayn Rand

where'd you lift that from? on this board, you give links.

as a poitical theorist, ayn rand was a decent novelist.

but it's nonsense.

i guess that whole part of the constitution that guarantees RIGHTS and charges the government with the general welfare of its populace and gives it the right to govern commerce among the several states is a figment of our imagination.

randians are such putzes.

Ugh. Only someone who has never read Ayn Rand, or who has seven pounds of brain damage, would ever call her "a decent novelist".

She had a profound knack for repeating a theme over and over and over and over and over, for hundreds of pages at a time what could have been captured in five, like some kind of literary re-education camp. Not really surprising, considering her origins.

She wrote better than Melville, and he is supposed to be a great novelist.

 

[Oddball]

The period between the American Civil War and WW II are a symbol of Libertarian success huh?

Women couldn't vote
Jim Crow laws
the Klan
60 hour work weeks with no paid time off at all
Disease-ridden "company towns"
Workplace deaths and injuries
"natural" disasters like the Johnstown Flood (preventable if dam-building standards had been in place and enforced.)

So who exactly were these "the good ol' days" for?
how was unbrideled capitalism providing civil liberties? How was "the marketplace" providing for education, police/fire protection, upholding sanitation standards, providing roads ... ?

Misty-eyed dreams of the days of yore are typically romanticized. The reality wasn't quite as rosy.

Nobody said it was perfect, Captain Strawman.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

you forgot the fact that she died collecting social security benefits.

A program to which she paid into, under threat of incarceration if she refused, therefore was perfectly within her moral code recoup that which was taken from her by compulsion.

Seems you authoritarian looters like to ignore that little tidbit of fact.

I think Ayn forgot to ask herself "What would Dagny do?" Rand was an absolutist. Social Security was wrong. Nobody should accept it. Period. No matter if you paid into it, accepting it would still be an affront to human dignity. Rand never waivered from her zealous hatred for the program. That is, until she was collecting the check herself. Then, magically, she came up with this post hoc argument that it was okay, just as long as the recipient called it something different (i.e. call it a reimbursement).

So, instead of trying to make swans out of ugly ducklings let's just call the duck a duck. Rand was a deranged lunatic who, when push came to shove, couldn't walk the walk. Rand taking Medicare and SS benefits can be summed up in one sentence: Oh, but that's different, somehow....

first, you have to prove that I actually care what Rand thought before your argument that your interpretation of her philosophy is more right than hers.

Second, Rand never once told anyone that they should not take Social Security. In fact, more than once, she advised opponents of the system to collect from it after paying into it, and announced her intention to do long before she was eligible.

As far as I can tell, the only people that think she is wrong for that are the extremists who prefer lies to truth.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That all sounds great, and a large part of me agrees. However, Ayn Rand's brand of libertarianism (or if you wish, her godless Objectivism) is one which takes no preventive measures whatsoever.

For example, the regulation of our food and drugs. Rand's minions are silent about doing anything preventive before you take food or medicine into your body, and only punishes the wicked after they have killed you with their poison for profit. As if the fear of punishment will stop evildoers. This is an attitude which is the epitome of gullibility and suffers from a profound ignorance of human nature and history.

The preventative actions should be taken by the insurers of and investors in the given companies....Huge federal bureaucracies like the FDA act as noting more than defacto protection rackets for the purpose of keep BigPharm big.

Regulatory capture is a hazard of every type of government. But I prefer the FDA to what we had before the FDA, which was nothing.

You prefer something that everyone admits doesn't do what it is intended to do to nothing, and you think I am crazy for preferring something that actually works.

Why?

 

[Oddball]

where'd you lift that from? on this board, you give links.

as a poitical theorist, ayn rand was a decent novelist.

but it's nonsense.

i guess that whole part of the constitution that guarantees RIGHTS and charges the government with the general welfare of its populace and gives it the right to govern commerce among the several states is a figment of our imagination.

randians are such putzes.

Ugh. Only someone who has never read Ayn Rand, or who has seven pounds of brain damage, would ever call her "a decent novelist".

She had a profound knack for repeating a theme over and over and over and over and over, for hundreds of pages at a time what could have been captured in five, like some kind of literary re-education camp. Not really surprising, considering her origins.

She wrote better than Melville, and he is supposed to be a great novelist.

Having never read Melville, and going by that measure, he must suck on toast.

Rand's purple prose is at once excessively florid and face-palmingly dreary.

Great themes...Had her antagonists perfectly nailed.....And an absolutely gawdawful writer.

 

[nodoginnafight]

The period between the American Civil War and WW II are a symbol of Libertarian success huh?

Women couldn't vote
Jim Crow laws
the Klan
60 hour work weeks with no paid time off at all
Disease-ridden "company towns"
Workplace deaths and injuries
"natural" disasters like the Johnstown Flood (preventable if dam-building standards had been in place and enforced.)

So who exactly were these "the good ol' days" for?
how was unbrideled capitalism providing civil liberties? How was "the marketplace" providing for education, police/fire protection, upholding sanitation standards, providing roads ... ?

Misty-eyed dreams of the days of yore are typically romanticized. The reality wasn't quite as rosy.

Nobody said it was perfect, Captain Strawman.

yeah and it was soooooo close. It was just too much government in the way, huh?

 

[Oddball]

The period between the American Civil War and WW II are a symbol of Libertarian success huh?

Women couldn't vote
Jim Crow laws
the Klan
60 hour work weeks with no paid time off at all
Disease-ridden "company towns"
Workplace deaths and injuries
"natural" disasters like the Johnstown Flood (preventable if dam-building standards had been in place and enforced.)

So who exactly were these "the good ol' days" for?
how was unbrideled capitalism providing civil liberties? How was "the marketplace" providing for education, police/fire protection, upholding sanitation standards, providing roads ... ?

Misty-eyed dreams of the days of yore are typically romanticized. The reality wasn't quite as rosy.

Nobody said it was perfect, Captain Strawman.

yeah and it was soooooo close. It was just too much government in the way, huh?

Perfection can never be an option....Grow up.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Private "watchdog" organizations would work best. There are also the courts which could convict & prosecute the offenders.

Sticking with the pharmaceutical example, take a look at those "therapies" which are not regulated by the FDA.

Homeopathy, for example. Magnetic shoe soles. Ionic bracelets. Reiki. And so forth.

Billions are spent on these utterly fraudulent devices, often at the cost of great harm and even death to the users who forego proper medical treatment in favor of these scams.

No prosecutions. No "watchdog" organizations that are in the least effective against them.

None.

That is even dumber than your previous claim. is the government supposed to protect people from things you consider fraudulent? What if those things actually help people that use them, is the government still supposed to step in?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Regulatory capture is a hazard of every type of government. But I prefer the FDA to what we had before the FDA, which was nothing.

based on what? How has the FDA improved anything?

Food quality, drug safety. You really need this explained to you?

United States Army beef scandal - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The government bought bad food and fed it to people, so that justifies the government being in charge of protecting us from bad food.

Am I the only one that sees a disconnect here?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Underwriters Laboratories is a favorite meme of Libertarians. Yet they seem to be ignorant of the fact that the government uses UL as a regulatory standard. UL and Uncle Sam are in bed together!

UL is an example, not any sort of proposed catch-all of a solution.

There are lots of other free market organizations that certify people doing certain things, USHPA, USPA, PADI, PSIA all serve as examples of such.

You fools are advocating a return to the days of the utterly corrupt guild system which was guilty of the very things of which you accuse the federal regulatory system.

The only people I see in this thread advocating anything are the pro government loons.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights.."-Ayn Rand

Wrong.

The purpose of a government is to provide the services that are deemed useful by the majority of voters.

That is what the democracy is about.

What if the majority decided we would be better off if we hung you in a cage in front of the Lincoln Memorial so that other statists could see how stupid it is to argue that the purpose of the government is to institute majority rule?

 

[Quantum Windbag]

That's EXACTLY what you are proposing. (regardless of cutesy emoticons).
How often do you see people resort to personal insults and emoticons when they have no real counter-argument?

No, it isn't.

The FDA could very handily be replaced by outfits like Underwriter's Laboratories or an entirely new private testing operation.

One of the big problems with the mindset of the lolberal central planner mindset is the completely preposterous noting that if Big Daddy Big Gubmint didn't do X, Y or Z, then nobody would do it.

One of the big problems with the mindset of Libertarians is the completely preposterous notion that corporations would work for the higher good without government regulation. History has definitively proven otherwise time and time and time and time again.

The strangest thing about statists is their insane insistence that government will work for the higher good despite having no evidence from history to support that position. They even go so far as to insist that government is the only possible arbiter of the common good, and that the free market will always work to destroy itself if the government does not regulate it into being good.

 

[Koios]

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights.."-Ayn Rand

Wrong.

The purpose of a government is to provide the services that are deemed useful by the majority of voters.

That is what the democracy is about.

What if the majority decided we would be better off if we hung you in a cage in front of the Lincoln Memorial so that other statists could see how stupid it is to argue that the purpose of the government is to institute majority rule?

Our Bill of Rights would bar it from happening.

The idea is when most of the people choose who votes on our laws, it should, for the most part, mitigate it getting too fucking loopy. But since it might get loopy, as it did in 2010, praise babayjesus, the FF predicted it and gave us a bi-cam lege, high court, and an exec, to create reasonable protections against total nutjobs, i.e. Ron Paul, Teas, etc. turning us into a third world shithole.

Thus, we do not vote on federal policy. We elect folks we think will do a good job of it.

 

[OohPooPahDoo]

"The only proper purpose of a government is to protect man’s rights, which means: to protect him from physical violence. A proper government is only a policeman, acting as an agent of man’s self-defense, and, as such, may resort to force only against those who start the use of force. The only proper functions of a government are: the police, to protect you from criminals; the army, to protect you from foreign invaders; and the courts, to protect your property and contracts from breach or fraud by others, to settle disputes by rational rules, according to objective law.

But a government that initiates the employment of force against men who had forced no one, the employment of armed compulsion against disarmed victims, is a nightmare infernal machine designed to annihilate morality: such a government reverses its only moral purpose and switches from the role of protector to the role of man’s deadliest enemy, from the role of policeman to the role of a criminal vested with the right to the wielding of violence against victims deprived of the right of self-defense. Such a government substitutes for morality the following rule of social conduct: you may do whatever you please to your neighbor, provided your gang is bigger than his"-Ayn Rand

Ayn Rand I guess hates the Constitution then, as it outlines far more purposes for government than merely protecting people from physical violence. Establishing a system or weights and measures, a post office, intellectual property rights, regulating commerce among the states - all establish powers for Congress in excess of merely protecting people from physical violence.

And I have to wonder - is the above a spoken or written quote? If its written she clearly doesn't re-read any of her own material. To first say the only role of government is to protect people from physical violence and to then say a proper role is also to protect contracts is contradictory, as I can think of numerous ways contracts can be violated without physical violence.

 

[Quantum Windbag]

Ahhh, Righties. How's that hook feeling in your mouth?

Why don't you tell me when you get yours out of your oral cavity?

Have you the slightest grasp of where the regs are authored and the function they perform?

Probably much better than you.

Where: by lobbyists, very often, who merely pay lip-service to the notion of less regulation, since dumbfucks eat it up and do not see what in fact is going on. Works like a charm.

You got that part right, the government has all the power, and lobbyist know that. They therefore set out collecting money to attempt to influence that power in their favor.

Why: removes free-market forces which would increase competition and cause price-compression. Larger concerns, with not only the resources to lobby government to the tune of $10s of millions, but also the money to fund large "compliance departments," can preserve a near monopoly, or at least more monopolize their markets, insuring vastly greater profits. Take anyone who's going on and on about "free-markets" and bet me they aren't bending over backward trying to diminish free-market forces and monopolize their sector to the exent possible, in service of the larger players in their industry.

Feel free to show me where I have lobbied to create regulations that reduce competition.

Wait, I know, you weren't talking about me, you were talking about other people.

Guess what, those other people support regulations, I oppose them. Yet you define me as right wing because I oppose regulations, and you define people who support them as left wing, and then try to insist that the people who oppose regulations actually are working to restrict free markets.

In other words, open mouth, insert foot, swallow attached hip.

That feeling you are experiencing as you read this, the awareness that you just scored the game winning touchdown for the other team because you ran the wrong way.