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[Frumple]

Civil what now? Is it edible?

You're (conceptually, anyway) protected from physical assault and maybe direct theft. Right to individual ownership is about all you get, with the extent of the law largely being what falls out of it and nothing else. Don't like how the area treats you, move. Can't move, well, you get to die miserable, possibly in a ditch. Have fun with that.

Can't remember the details, but that particular line of thought either dismisses civil rights as a concept (there's fundamental rights and sod all else) or interprets them very differently and/or much more narrow, iirc.

[Ekaton]

So how does that relate to civil rights? Seems the state, in this model, must be the guarantor of civil rights.

It can be described in many different ways, but generally it is all based on human rights, which are essentially what the state has to protect. That is why things such as verbal abuse, invading your privacy, infringing your right to speak freely or promote your ideas are all violations of individual's rights and must be both prevented and punished by the state.

[Dorsidwarf]

Why is it alright for your money to go to the wages of the police but not to the wages of, say, council binmen? I assume it's because if the police/military aren't nationalised there's basically a guaranteed private coup by the owners  under that system

[Ggobs]

Yes, if you're not slaving away a third of your time at a pointless job for far less than a living wage like the protestant work ethic demands then odds are you're a slovenly hippie or crazed right-wing nut.

Makes sense though. If you've got a job the system is working (from your prospective).

[Frumple]

Depends pretty massively on the job, heh. Particularly for the younger generations, from what I understand -- not nearly as tolerant of certain sorts of bullshit when the majority of the screw ups of yesteryear are landing squaring on top of 'em.

If you have a job, but no life outside it, barely any margin from transport etc. costs, are massively stressed out trying to keep up with everything while having functionally no down time, all on top of no realistic chance of promotion or transfer to something less miserable and living paycheck to paycheck, and all the rest of the usual low level low pay crap, well.

From your perspective job or not the system bloody well ain't working, ha.

[RedKing]

So how does that relate to civil rights? Seems the state, in this model, must be the guarantor of civil rights.

It can be described in many different ways, but generally it is all based on human rights, which are essentially what the state has to protect. That is why things such as verbal abuse, invading your privacy, infringing your right to speak freely or promote your ideas are all violations of individual's rights and must be both prevented and punished by the state.

And what happens when one group....oh, I don't know, let's say white supremacists...decides to speak freely and promote their ideas by marching through a predominantly African-American part of town chanting racial slurs and carrying Confederate flags? I know, crazy right? But just on the off-hand, infinitesimal chance that happens -- then what?

The state has to protect one group from verbal abuse and intimidation, but in doing so violates another group's idea of "personal expression".

I think I agree with Frumple -- the only logically consistent Libertarian stance is that the government stays the hell out of it and lets people be utter dicks to each other, short of violence. Which is how you get violence.

[Max™]

Yes, if you're not slaving away a third of your time at a pointless job for far less than a living wage like the protestant work ethic demands then odds are you're a slovenly hippie or crazed right-wing nut.

Makes sense though. If you've got a job the system is working (from your prospective).

This position has only gotten stronger while employed for piss poor wages doing menial work, it might make sense to you, but no, I remain convinced that the protestant work ethic is vile and despicable. People all too easily accept the idea that spending time improving yourself, learning, crafting, or doing anything which doesn't involve directly earning a wage, however pitiful, is somehow lazy or evil? Fuck that shit, and fuck the assholes who encourage others to believe it. There is nothing noble about wasting a huge chunk of your life struggling to barely survive while you line the pockets of people who don't give half a fuck about your situation.

It's weird being super-left enough that damn near everything looks right-wing and bumping into someone so far to the right that everything looks left-wing to them.

At least you aren't like some people on the Far Left who are like "Everyone to the right of me is a Nazi"

I don't give a fuck about the political portion of beliefs held by someone who also holds the belief that it's cool to invalidate the existence of some arbitrarily declared group of people. They aren't nazis because they think [insert political position here] is important, they're nazis because they think anyone without white skin isn't a person.

[Neonivek]

I was speaking more of the political polarization where people go "Anyone who isn't exactly like us, is our political opposite"

Which I am happy you don't do Max, at least if I take you at face value.

[scriver]

This position has only gotten stronger while employed for piss poor wages doing menial work, it might make sense to you, but no, I remain convinced that the protestant work ethic is vile and despicable. People all too easily accept the idea that spending time improving yourself, learning, crafting, or doing anything which doesn't involve directly earning a wage, however pitiful, is somehow lazy or evil? Fuck that shit, and fuck the assholes who encourage others to believe it. There is nothing noble about wasting a huge chunk of your life struggling to barely survive while you line the pockets of people who don't give half a fuck about your situation.

You seem to have a rather distorted view of what "the protestant work ethic" entails.

[Frumple]

No, no they do not. Not the stateside abomination, anyway. Max is pretty much dead on to how folks that hammer that sort of thing give every indication of thinking, over here. Maybe it's not as bad in europe, I'unno. It pretty literally kills people, over here, as the belief drives them to work even when they need to rest, eventually leading to medical problems and/or death.

Also costs companies fairly massive bundles of dosh each year in lost productivity, amusingly enough. Folks bring in illness, work themselves to the point their output and/or moral suffers, etc., etc.

[smjjames]

This position has only gotten stronger while employed for piss poor wages doing menial work, it might make sense to you, but no, I remain convinced that the protestant work ethic is vile and despicable. People all too easily accept the idea that spending time improving yourself, learning, crafting, or doing anything which doesn't involve directly earning a wage, however pitiful, is somehow lazy or evil? Fuck that shit, and fuck the assholes who encourage others to believe it. There is nothing noble about wasting a huge chunk of your life struggling to barely survive while you line the pockets of people who don't give half a fuck about your situation.

You seem to have a rather distorted view of what "the protestant work ethic" entails.

It's a pretty dang good description of how the Republicans view it.

[Tellemurius]

I don't give a fuck about the political portion of beliefs held by someone who also holds the belief that it's cool to invalidate the existence of some arbitrarily declared group of people. They aren't nazis because they think [insert political position here] is important, they're nazis because they think anyone without white skin isn't a person.

It's their right and ours as well to believe what we want. Doesn't matter if its wrong or not the law protects it all. And no I don't believe we should start making amendments to label what is hate speech cause then we are giving that right away from our control.

[Frumple]

Uh. Believe, yes, but most everything that gets out your head is a bit more on the limited side. I'm pretty sure we'd still be mostly fine with applying some sort of censure to people saying they want to murder people. Since we already do, and it sees, ah. Notably less use for suppression than it does, y'know, stopping homicidal/temporarily insane folks from managing to reach a weapon and start killing people.

No particular need to protect genocide advocacy, really. Particularly once the advocate in question has started trying to do what they say they're going to do before they start actually murdering people. The trick is what happens when you take someone saying they want to kill people seriously, as they start taking action claimed to be aiming for it, y'know? Law's pretty okay with you reacting to death threats somewhat more than verbally, last I checked.

[Max™]

I'm no fan of beliefs, as I've stated before, but I'm a vocal opponent of trying to force others to accept changes to their life because of someone believing something. It's pretty bad when you believe something and want to prevent a stranger from undergoing some sort of procedure or whatnot. It's downright vile when you believe someone is less than a person and want to prevent them from breathing any longer.

If you keep your mouth shut and just keep your douchebaggery to yourself, whatever, but once you're sharing it in public, if someone started smearing their shit all over you, you'd probably be pissed off, but when it's verbal diarrhea there is a reason to respect it?

The 1st says the government doesn't get to decide what is allowed regarding public speech, that is good. It doesn't say you have to listen to actual fucking nazis, respect their beliefs, or defend their right to spew hateful bullshit everywhere.

This position has only gotten stronger while employed for piss poor wages doing menial work, it might make sense to you, but no, I remain convinced that the protestant work ethic is vile and despicable. People all too easily accept the idea that spending time improving yourself, learning, crafting, or doing anything which doesn't involve directly earning a wage, however pitiful, is somehow lazy or evil? Fuck that shit, and fuck the assholes who encourage others to believe it. There is nothing noble about wasting a huge chunk of your life struggling to barely survive while you line the pockets of people who don't give half a fuck about your situation.

You seem to have a rather distorted view of what "the protestant work ethic" entails.

It's a pretty dang good description of how the Republicans view it.

Which, to be as fair as I'm gonna get, is rather deliberately distorted in favor of the fuckers pushing the idea that welfare queens exist and are a major problem because who wouldn't want to ride the poverty line to get a sweet sweet payout of a couple dozen grand a year to live on?

[Reelya]

The point about Trump and taxation is that nothing really changes in that matter as he accepts the most outrageous forms of taxation such as income tax or VAT. He will not get rid of them and even approves of a progressive form of taxing individuals/corporations.

Except ... there's centuries of economic knowledge encoded in how we do things. All the rich countries have high taxation. Low tax countries are all dirt poor, or they're merely trading ports (or tax haven scams) which rely on trade with large nations nearby. If you look at poor "communist" nations they all in fact have pretty low government spending per GDP. Wealthy capitalist nations in fact have high taxation and spending, which maintains a high level of economic activity.

If there was a finite amount of money and no taxation then the rich would accumulate all the capital and there would be very little turnover of capital. There would be price deflation, because there would be cash shortages in the regular economy, and this would effectively make the rich even richer (having all the money and it buys even more stuff), giving them no incentive to stimulate the economy.

If you spend a dollar, you grow the economy, if you take a dollar away, you shrink the economy. But what you add or remove a dollar from has a different effect. This is called fiscal multipliers. And basically out of necessity, the structure of spending and taxation has resulted in many of the things we spend money on having high fiscal multipliers and taxation on things with low fiscal multipliers. This is all justifiable purely on macro-economics and seeing the government's job as being to grow the economy. Tax breaks for billionaires have a very poor fiscal multiplier, while food stamps have a very high fiscal multiplier.

If you slash billionaire tax rates and save the money by scrapping the food stamp program, you crash the economy and destroy millions of jobs. If you provide food money for the poor, then jobs are created feeding the poor. Many jobs are created per dollar spent. if you take that same money and give it to a billionaire in the form of top-end tax breaks then a few jobs are created for accountants. This is just basic economics, whether it's the right thing or not to feed poor children isn't even factored in yet. You spend money on things that create many jobs and take money away from things that create few jobs.