Zuckerberg going Libertarian?

[ZenMode]

Liberalism acknowledges that government must be used to protect the people’s rights from being infringed by institutions/interests with more power than them. Without government, the people have no means to protect themselves from the petty tyranny of those who simply were born into more money and privilege than them.

I agree that some government regulation is needed and I'm not advocating moving the country to fundamental libertarianism any more than I'm advocating moving the country to fundamental liberalism or fundamental conservatism. I do think that federal government is too big and wasteful and neither of the two major parties is willing to do anything to address spending and is very happy to continue to grow government.

 

[superrific]

I do think that federal government is too big and wasteful and neither of the two major parties is willing to do anything to address spending and is very happy to continue to grow government.

1. Define too big. What should the proper "size" of the federal government be?
2. Is the federal government more or less wasteful than, say, Exxon? You know this how?
3. Since the two major parties don't agree on anything, except growing government, maybe their lack of interest in addressing spending (note: we'll assume for sake of discussion that this lack exists) is telling you something? Maybe there's not actually much demand for "shrinking" the government. And if that's the case, maybe you're not really seeing the full picture here.

 

[superrific]

Who the F do you think is running the uniparty?

What does Anthony Davis have to do with anything?

 

[aGDevil2k]

If it weren't for Elon, Zuck would be by far the worst person in social media.

As it is he's a distant second. And he still sucks.

 

[superrific]

I would have sympathy for someone between the ages of 12-16 who was a libertarian. Beyond that, only contempt.

There are two novels that can change a bookish fourteen-year old’s life: The Lord of the Rings and Atlas Shrugged. One is a childish fantasy that often engenders a lifelong obsession with its unbelievable heroes, leading to an emotionally stunted, socially crippled adulthood, unable to deal with the real world. The other, of course, involves orcs.

Paul Krugman attributes that to someone else but I've only seen it from him.

 

[Ddseddse]

1. Define too big. What should the proper "size" of the federal government be?
2. Is the federal government more or less wasteful than, say, Exxon? You know this how?
3. Since the two major parties don't agree on anything, except growing government, maybe their lack of interest in addressing spending (note: we'll assume for sake of discussion that this lack exists) is telling you something? Maybe there's not actually much demand for "shrinking" the government. And if that's the case, maybe you're not really seeing the full picture here.

Additionally, government outlay is only really meaningful in the context of government intake. If you're not willing to have the full in/out budget discussion then you're not acting in good faith.

By that I specifically mean your objection to government spending is not budget based, because "budget", by definition, is the precise interplay between what get's taken in and what flows out. Talking about "budget" when only addressing one side of the ledger is patent nonsense.

You may have objections to government spending, but they sure as hell aren't "budget" based objections.

 

[ZenMode]

1. Define too big. What should the proper "size" of the federal government be? - Too big meaning that there are departments/programs/headcount that can be downsized or eliminated.
2. Is the federal government more or less wasteful than, say, Exxon? You know this how? - If Exxon, or any private company, was 30+ trillion in the red, I suspect they'd be closed by now.
3. Since the two major parties don't agree on anything, except growing government, maybe their lack of interest in addressing spending (note: we'll assume for sake of discussion that this lack exists) is telling you something? Maybe there's not actually much demand for "shrinking" the government. And if that's the case, maybe you're not really seeing the full picture here. - Or, maybe their lack of interest in addressing spending is due to the fact that proposing the needed changes would put their jobs at risk. The national debt is an issue. The fact that the people in power are too chickenshit to do anything, or are willing to kick the can down the road to avoid ruffling feathers, isn't going to make the debt/spending less of an issue. The opinion of any individual congressmen's constituents is irrelevant. We have a spending/debt issue that needs to be addressed and neither of the two major parties is willing to address it.

 

[superrific]

It's all about "my rights" with libertarians. When have you ever heard a Libertarian acknowledge that someone other than them had rights? When was the last time you heard a Libertarian acknowledge that one person's or group's rights had to be balanced against another person's or group's rights? I mean FFS, what the F have we been doing for the last 250 years if not doing our level best (imperfectly, admittedly) to balance the rights of respective people and groups?

I am no fan of libertarians, but this is unfair. Cato, for instance, spends a fair amount of time and even a bit of political capital fighting against police militarization, civil forfeiture, and police misconduct. They also dislike qualified immunity, mandatory drug sentencing laws, the War on Drugs generally, and so on.

The problem is that you don't have to be a libertarian to fight those battles, and the vast majority of people who are fighting them aren't libertarians. Meanwhile, you do have to be a libertarian to carry water for the rich, especially on issues that even the country club Pubs wouldn't want to touch. So when people see libertarians, that's often the context. And over the past 20-30 years especially, libertarians have found it hard to find $$ support. The people who back them expect a certain degree of service on issues important to them. And thus do libertarians spend most of their time on the economic shit.

Libertarians aren't bad people. Mostly, they are just assholes, which isn't necessarily the same. Almost without fail (in my significant experience, at least), the loudest and most obnoxious members of any law school class are 1) a libertarian know-it-all who thinks Ayn Rand and Econ 101 teach all there is to know; and 2) a "progressive" poseur who wants to fight with everyone. But I've never known a libertarian who is attracted to "the cruelty is the point" politics of the GOP.

 

[superrific]

"Too big meaning that there are departments/programs/headcount that can be downsized or eliminated."

Anything can be downsized or eliminated. We could privatize the armed forces if we wanted. Sure, we'd end up like Somalia but it's something that could be done.

If you want to talk about waste, then point us to the downsizing or elimination of departments or programs which accomplish nothing.

 

[superrific]

"If Exxon, or any private company, was 30+ trillion in the red, I suspect they'd be closed by now."

Exxon is 35B in the red, so about 1/1000 of the federal government. Its income is less than 1/1000 of the federal government's income. Its debt is about 15-20 times its profits, meaning that if it stopped investing or paying dividends, it would take that long to wipe out its debt. If the government stopped paying social security and medicare, it would pay off the federal debt in a similar amount of time.

But anyway, when you start comparing the finances of the federal government to private companies, you've gone badly astray. I asked you about waste, not the balance sheet. It turns out that large organizations are frequently wasteful. Because it's actually quite difficult to manage a huge organization.

 

[Ddseddse]

I am no fan of libertarians, but this is unfair. Cato, for instance, spends a fair amount of time and even a bit of political capital fighting against police militarization, civil forfeiture, and police misconduct. They also dislike qualified immunity, mandatory drug sentencing laws, the War on Drugs generally, and so on.

The problem is that you don't have to be a libertarian to fight those battles, and the vast majority of people who are fighting them aren't libertarians. Meanwhile, you do have to be a libertarian to carry water for the rich, especially on issues that even the country club Pubs wouldn't want to touch. So when people see libertarians, that's often the context. And over the past 20-30 years especially, libertarians have found it hard to find $$ support. The people who back them expect a certain degree of service on issues important to them. And thus do libertarians spend most of their time on the economic shit.

Libertarians aren't bad people. Mostly, they are just assholes, which isn't necessarily the same. Almost without fail (in my significant experience, at least), the loudest and most obnoxious members of any law school class are 1) a libertarian know-it-all who thinks Ayn Rand and Econ 101 teach all there is to know; and 2) a "progressive" poseur who wants to fight with everyone. But I've never known a libertarian who is attracted to "the cruelty is the point" politics of the GOP.

Fair point with Cato, but Cato doesn't represent the rank and file of Libertarians in 2024 any more than Dick Cheney represents rank and file Republicans in 2024.

And while I 100% agree that there isn't a cruel streak in the harmless kooks who showed up at the libertarian conventions over the decades (for example), I disagree that the cruel streak doesn't exist in spades in the Tech Bro wing of the Libertarianism which is where the center of gravity is migrating to (is and not uncoincidentally, the topic of this thread).

 

[superrific]

Or, maybe their lack of interest in addressing spending is due to the fact that proposing the needed changes would put their jobs at risk. The national debt is an issue. The fact that the people in power are too chickenshit to do anything, or are willing to kick the can down the road to avoid ruffling feathers, isn't going to make the debt/spending less of an issue.

Well, we've seen that the GOP is infinitely malleable when their jobs are on the line. The vast majority of them, faced with the Kinzinger/Cheney choice of selling out to Trump and sticking to principles, choose political expedience, because they will lose their jobs if they don't. So if there was popular demand for deficit reduction, the GOP would be on it. There is not. Trump hasn't captured the hearts and minds of the GOP base by being a deficit hawk. Quite the opposite -- his policies are ridiculously profligate. That's what the GOP base wants. It's not the politicians' fault.

The one positive of Trumpism is that it highlighted how much of the old GOP orthodoxy was and is a lie. When a conservative says, "we can't afford that," almost always that person means "that's spending I don't like." And usually the reason they frame it as a question of affordability is that they can't speak their true objection without alienating people.

 

[superrific]

Fair point with Cato, but Cato doesn't represent the rank and file of Libertarians in 2024 any more than Dick Cheney represents rank and file Republicans in 2024.

And while I 100% agree that there isn't a cruel streak in the harmless kooks who showed up at the libertarian conventions over the decades (for example), I disagree that the cruel streak doesn't exist in spades in the Tech Bro wing of the Libertarianism which is where the center of gravity is migrating to.

I didn't take you to be talking only about libertarianism in 2024. I don't think most Tech Bros are in it for the cruelty. They are just the new Koch Brothers. They don't want pesky government regulations eating into their wealth. For Koch it was environmental and labor. For Tech, it's antitrust and crypto.

 

[BlooVooDoo]

Fair point with Cato, but Cato doesn't represent the rank and file of Libertarians in 2024 any more than Dick Cheney represents rank and file Republicans in 2024.

And while I 100% agree that there isn't a cruel streak in the harmless kooks who showed up at the libertarian conventions over the decades (for example), I disagree that the cruel streak doesn't exist in spades in the Tech Bro wing of the Libertarianism which is where the center of gravity is migrating to (is and not uncoincidentally, the topic of this thread).

Libertarians don’t want government to be the instrument of cruelty.

 

[Ddseddse]

I didn't take you to be talking only about libertarianism in 2024. I don't think most Tech Bros are in it for the cruelty. They are just the new Koch Brothers. They don't want pesky government regulations eating into their wealth. For Koch it was environmental and labor. For Tech, it's antitrust and crypto.

I did have a whole edit types out to say that is wasn't the cruelty as much as the naked power and domination with the tech bros. but then decided not to post it as it was splitting hairs a bit. Even for MAGA the cruelty is the point is just a means to an end to get to the power and domination.

 

[ZenMode]

"If Exxon, or any private company, was 30+ trillion in the red, I suspect they'd be closed by now."

Exxon is 35B in the red, so about 1/1000 of the federal government. Its income is less than 1/1000 of the federal government's income. Its debt is about 15-20 times its profits, meaning that if it stopped investing or paying dividends, it would take that long to wipe out its debt. If the government stopped paying social security and medicare, it would pay off the federal debt in a similar amount of time.

But anyway, when you start comparing the finances of the federal government to private companies, you've gone badly astray. I asked you about waste, not the balance sheet. It turns out that large organizations are frequently wasteful. Because it's actually quite difficult to manage a huge organization.

“ But anyway, when you start comparing the finances of the federal government to private companies, you've gone badly astray. ”

Well, you made the comparison, so I’m not sure what to tell you….

 

[Ddseddse]

Libertarians don’t want government to be the instrument of cruelty.

You're fooling yourself.

They absolutely want want government to be the instrument instrument of their cruelty, only it should be a government that is completely subservient to them, of course.

And let's dispense with the foolish notion that stripping people of their rights and grinding them under your bootheel is not cruelty (not aimed at you BVD).

 

[superrific]

“ But anyway, when you start comparing the finances of the federal government to private companies, you've gone badly astray. ”

Well, you made the comparison, so I’m not sure what to tell you….

I was talking about waste, not debt, because you were talking about waste. Then you changed the topic to debt, which isn't at all the same thing. It's typical goalpost-shifting from someone who is congenitally unable to have a good faith discussion.

 

[ZenMode]

"Too big meaning that there are departments/programs/headcount that can be downsized or eliminated."

Anything can be downsized or eliminated. We could privatize the armed forces if we wanted. Sure, we'd end up like Somalia but it's something that could be done.

If you want to talk about waste, then point us to the downsizing or elimination of departments or programs which accomplish nothing.

I don’t think a discussion about specific programs/departments, etc would be useful. Liberals, which you are, tend to support wide-spread government oversight and regulation, so it’s unlikely that you see any government program/department that is unnecessary.

 

[superrific]

They absolutely want want government to be the instrument of their cruelty, only it should be a government that is completely subservient to them, of course.

Yeah, but are the types of cruelty the same? Kids in cages and women dying in hospitals from ectopic pregnancies aren't the same thing as destroying unions. They might be equally bad in some sense (perhaps most senses) but they aren't really the same thing.

To make an analogy that is quite apt given the topic, the American people have for some reason decided that eliminating safety measures in a coal mine until the mine blows up and 30+ people are killed is not as grievous an offense as killing someone during a stickup. They are really the same thing: both Blankenship in WVa (and other mining executives) and the liquor store robber saw human life as an impediment to pecuniary gain, and decided to sacrifice the former for the sake of the latter. Yet only one of those crimes is subject to life in jail or worse.

I've long seen them as more similar than different, but in my experience that's a minority opinion. And if we're going to draw that distinction, then I think we should also draw a distinction between kids in cages and reduced unemployment benefits. If you're with me in not recognizing the distinction, that's fine but again, I think we are fairly idiosyncratic in that regard. Not too idiosyncratic (since we agree!) and of course idiosyncrasy doesn't imply wrongness, but we should at least take stock of the fact that most people think differently in this regard.