America is lost...

You might argue that if the citizens put enough pressure on politicians, they would reform the system and eliminate some of these behemoth bureaucracies. But that’s where propaganda comes in. Despite the efforts of whistleblowers and endless scandals, the media has convinced people these agencies are watchdogs protecting citizens from terrorists, monopolies, polluters, and the like. What they really do is enrich the establishment, squash dissent, and extract resources around the globe for private interests.
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Mus, is right on here. This has been going on for more than 100 years too. The Progressive movement has really screwed up our government and country. This is but one thing they are responsible for.

The propaganda is thick. Any time a Libertarian like me talks to anyone, I get the usual, but what about the roads, but why don't you care about public health, but why don't you care about consumers' rights, but why don't you care about the environment, but why can't you see that is so impractical?

Those are all logical questions IF you believe the system we have is the only one that could possibly work and that it works as adverstised.
 
Monahorns said:
Mus, is right on here.
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The problem is that he overstates his case as you do. Of course you can find anecdotes of corruption in government agencies. However, you all damage your credibility when you suggest that corruption is all they do or primarily what they do, when that's obviously not the case. I understand why you won't concede that point (because that would invite dealing with the anecdotes rather than some big structural move), but everybody pretty much knows it to be true.

Monahorns said:
The propaganda is thick. Any time a Libertarian like me talks to anyone, I get the usual, but what about the roads, but why don't you care about public health, but why don't you care about consumers' rights, but why don't you care about the environment, but why can't you see that is so impractical?

Those are all logical questions IF you believe the system we have is the only one that could possibly work and that it works as adverstised.
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Actually those are logical questions to ask either way. I'm not a fan of the "why don't you care" questions, because they presume government regulation is the only way to deal with whatever the presumed problem is. However, there's nothing illogical about asking a libertarian to answer questions about practicality, the environment, consumer rights, etc. The reason you all don't like those questions is that you usually don't have persuasive answers to them. Imposing artificial conditions on the legitimacy of asking them is a diversion.
 
Mr. Deez said:
However, you all damage your credibility when you suggest that corruption is all they do or primarily what they do, when that's obviously not the case. I understand why you won't concede that point (because that would invite dealing with the anecdotes rather than some big structural move), but everybody pretty much knows it to be true.
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No, that is not "obviously not the case." In fact, it obviously is the case. Looting of the public purse has reached the point its beyond comprehension. Let's start with hundreds of billions of unaccounted for, stolen, or lost dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon cannot even conduct an audit. How about the Department of Justice. Eric Holder set the precedent of not prosecuting executives at large financial institutions using the excuse it would be detrimental the financial stability of the country. You've got to be willingly blind not to see Washington DC is now a hopeless cesspool.

Sure, the thousands of rank and file in these bureaucracies aren't out to scam America. Neither were the thousands of employees who worked at ENRON. But just as with ENRON, the leadership; the people whose hands were on the controls, made it a mission to obfuscate, coverup, and extract as many dollars as possible. The majority of the people working there either didn't know what was going on, or turned a blind eye because they didn't want to rock the boat and wreck the system they depended on. And I'm sure you would come back and say, but yeah - our government did its job and punished them, thus protecting the citizens as intended. Well, sort of. Internal whistleblowers brought it to light, and the government had no choice but do its job. And in this case, there was little if any benefit to the government to allow the scams to continue. The point I'm making here is that a bureaucracy, public or private, can be taken over by corrupt people and turn the organization into something other than its stated purpose for the sole benefits of the people running it.

We must deal with the anecdotes eventually because no big structural move is possible. The majority of people still see it your way (the system is imperfect and just needs some changes here and there, but its basically doing the job etc.) but that's rapidly changing. Very rapidly. No one has the answer. I believe a new monetary system is needed. I also believe it would be better for regions of the country - States or alliances of States - to secede and start anew. I'm sure you would mock this idea and say "Oh, burn the thing down; just give up. Blah, Blah, Blah."

Look. Our economic system is becoming wholly financialized. We depend on the rest of world to produce things and we pay for them with borrowed money (debt) and maintain the system by force. This is empire. The whole thing collapses eventually. The current system is now maintained by force. The benefactors are the 1% and probably the next 10% that support them. Its better to walk away and secede sooner, go through tough rebuilds, than to wait for collapse and the death and turmoil that will accompany that scenario.
 
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The problem is that he overstates his case as you do. Of course you can find anecdotes of corruption in government agencies. However, you all damage your credibility when you suggest that corruption is all they do or primarily what they do, when that's obviously not the case. I understand why you won't concede that point (because that would invite dealing with the anecdotes rather than some big structural move), but everybody pretty much knows it to be true.
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I don't know what point you are trying to make about anecdotes vs structural change. I think structural change is needed but you sound like you are saying the opposite. It sounds to me you think the problems are anecdotal, but yet you then state they aren't. I'm confused.

I'm not even sure that "corruption" is the problem. Of course there is corruption. To me the problem is the size and scope of the government, the parts of it that aren't democratically accountable, and the normal human incentives that come in to play when you give humans huge amounts of power.

We can't even get Rs to be serious about the budget and spending. There was a whole conservative movement, the Tea Party, that was able to get people elected, but most of them have turned into spending squishes themselves. So the problem isn't our voting. It is the corrupting power of Capital hill. But again that corruption comes in the form of normal, not clearly unethical, incentives of going along to get along. The failure of the Tea Party candidates and the failure of the Trump administration to make any meaningful change to the Swamp, tells me these people aren't really accountable to us.

They could be, if, if, if, if. But voters can only be so informed. We voters only get options of a certain characteristic, meaning if our conservative rep turns into a center left moderate in Congress, how much ca anyone believe the next conservative talking candidate will actually do anything. It's almost as if the system is manipulated to get what the system wants.

Actually those are logical questions to ask either way. I'm not a fan of the "why don't you care" questions, because they presume government regulation is the only way to deal with whatever the presumed problem is. However, there's nothing illogical about asking a libertarian to answer questions about practicality, the environment, consumer rights, etc. The reason you all don't like those questions is that you usually don't have persuasive answers to them. Imposing artificial conditions on the legitimacy of asking them is a diversion.
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There's nothing illogical about asking a libertarian to answer questions about practicality. Of course not. But as a libertarian, this is why I made the comment, you don't know how many times I see the same questions asked over and over and over again. Every time with the attitude you have, which is that we libertarians have never been asked the question and surely don't have an answer. Ask away. Your comment of artificial conditions is something you constructed in your own mind. They don't exist. But it is claiming a deflection to deflect from my frustration at peoples' ignorance.

The fact that you have the attitude you do shows me beyond a doubt that you don't really know what libertarians believe or how they propose to deal with things. In fact, most of what libertarians propose are things that worked perfectly well through large stretches of human history very well. The systems that built the modern world. It starts with truly understanding markets, what they are, and what the process allows society to do without any central planning. I have read books detailing some really interesting thoughts about what to do. There are libertarian groups creating new currencies. There are attempts to produce closer local affiliations that can provide security and charity. There are websites like mises.org which often have articles discussing alternatives to provide different things for life. But part of the answer is that in markets there is spontaneous order. In history you can see that humans have organized via many methods to provide different types of goods and services without a state or without at least a huge centralized state.

Part of the problem of society today is that it largely exists at 2 levels only. The State and the individual, whether that be federal, state, or local. The influence and power of intermediate organizations like families, churches, tribes, neighborhoods, schools, and a whole host of civic organizations have been minimized. They still exist in some way today, but mostly are under and dependent and tied to a state of some kind. The reason this has happened is because the state in the US has seized roles and responsibilities that previously were held by other entities. And we don't have recourse because they take the money we were previously giving to those entities and use it to create state run agencies to do the same thing. Again, no one asked for this kind of thing. They just did it unilaterally. Look at the New Deal. Look at the Great Society. This stuff was thought up in DC. No one asked for them. Then the government went on a advertisement campaign to convince people it was a good thing. Those who oppose are demonized and marginalized. This doesn't come from citizens. This is top down. Forced on people who are then manipulated into accepting it. It's possible to reverse it. But it takes first a way to end the manipulation just to get people vote against it. Then it takes candidates ready to go fight without compromise for decades to eat away at all that has been built over the last 120 years.
 
"Then the government went on a advertisement campaign to convince people it was a good thing"
They were still doing it under Obama. Sent people to Florida to convince seniors to sign up for SNAP. Even when people said they didn't need it the gov't people would try convince them to sign up for it.
 
"Then the government went on a advertisement campaign to convince people it was a good thing"
They were still doing it under Obama. Sent people to Florida to convince seniors to sign up for SNAP. Even when people said they didn't need it the gov't people would try convince them to sign up for it.
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This is a huge problem that I think isn't widely understood. The government uses a large amount of resources to convince people what they are doing is correct.

You correctly added an example that I forgot long ago. I'm sure many more could be added if enough people thought about it. One of the greatest sins of the US government is propaganda. They use science organizations, other kind of experts, agencies, but then more directly in news media, public education from K through PhD. And it isn't the stupid people who the most brainwashed. The more education one receives the more likely they are to be fooled. This is a conclusion by a professor of propaganda at NYU, Mark Crispin Miller.

It's so bad that the CIA has operations in holywood, corporate news, and academia.
 
This is part of the Liberal disease: Mindless Egaliltarianism.

They are playing social games with the country they hate.

Kathleen Hicks is Biden’s pick to be first female deputy Defense secretary

"Hicks “knows the building, long history there. Plus, glass shattering pick,” said one of the people. “Having gender diversity is important at the top.”

But then we have, "long history." Swamp? Neo-Con? Warmongerer? What is it my friends on the Left? What's the real analysis here?
 
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huisache said:
Meritocracy is what gave us Robert McNamara


It sux as much as diversity
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No, it doesn’t. The idea that someone achieving something through innovation/efficiency/effort “sucking” as much as someone being chosen because they were born with certain characteristics could not be more wrong.
 
huisache said:
Meritocracy is what gave us Robert McNamara
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iatrogenic said:
No, it doesn’t. The idea that someone achieving something through innovation/efficiency/effort “sucking” as much as someone being chosen because they were born with certain characteristics could not be more wrong.
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And was McNamara really picked on merit? The guy helped push the Edsel. I don't see a whole lot of merit there.
 
As McNamara told Kennedy before being picked, “I don’t know anything about government “. Not much merit in that choice.
 
Barack Obama Spells Out Importance Of Georgia Runoff Elections

From the party that disenfranchises the voters in it's own primary. AND, we're not a Democracy.

Obama is a liar. Liberals are liars. But they "feel our pain" meaning they are political charlatans who prey on those who can't detach their own personal hang-ups and emotions from reality. They have to make those hang-ups reality. That's why they are so easily swayed.
 
Monahorns said:
Not sure what thread secession was being discussed within. Deez more or less nailed it, but here is a good article about it.

Walter Williams: An Unlikely Proponent of Secession | José Niño
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From the article:
Even on the eve of the American Civil War, Northern politicians acknowledged that secession was a legal tactic states could use when they were dissatisfied with the federal government. Williams duly noted this:

Several months earlier, Reps. Daniel E. Sickles of New York, Thomas B. Florence of Pennsylvania and Otis S. Ferry of Connecticut proposed a constitutional amendment to prohibit secession. Here's a question for the reader: Would there have been any point to offering these amendments if secession were already unconstitutional?
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Many of the Northern states had threatened secession if slavery remained legal and previously when the 3/5s compromise was enacted (if my memory is correct). The Northern states wanted slaves to count 0. 3/5s in their eyes gave political power to slave holders while those being counted essentially had no representation. It was a way of the slaves existence giving more power to their captors.

But government schools NEVER teach that now. Brainwashing indeed.
 
They have become so bold that they now openly talk of genocide
There is no one in the media to question it
No one left on social media able to criticize it

Er229uFWMAAxdnm
 
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