Philosophical Vegan Forum

I gave him the benefit of the doubt after the Aleppo incident, but after this I am thinking that he may be even dumber than Donald Trump.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JJYzuv1XG_Y

As a libertarian, I thought it came with the territory?

Libertarians don't care about international politics; it's kind of a "mind your own business" thing.
I think the bigger issue is that libertarianism doesn't work. Johnson isn't a very strict libertarian, though, which is to his credit. He supports the EPA, for example.

brimstoneSalad wrote:As a libertarian, I thought it came with the territory?

Libertarians don't care about international politics; it's kind of a "mind your own business" thing.
I think the bigger issue is that libertarianism doesn't work. Johnson isn't a very strict libertarian, though, which is to his credit. He supports the EPA, for example.

Are you saying all libertarians are 'retarded'?

That's not true that they don't care at all; they're just hesitant to get involved in pointless wars.

He might support the EPA, but he also wants more coal plants.
According to him, global climate change is a real and man-made, but he says that eventually Earth will be destroyed by the Sun, so we shouldn't do anything about climate change.
He also literally has pretended to be mentally challenged (to make a point).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K25YxcabnhI
"Climate change, I think the world is getting warmer. I think that it's man-caused. That said, should we be engaged in cap-and-trade taxation? No, I don't think that we should. We should lend certainty to the energy field; we should be building new coal-fired plants. Should we take the long term view when it comes to global warming? I think that we should. And the long term view is that in billions of years, the sun is actually gonna grow and encompass the Earth, right? So global warming is in our future."

EquALLity wrote: That's not true that they don't care at all; they're just hesitant to get involved in pointless wars.

They only care if somebody attacks us. Defense only.

EquALLity wrote:He might support the EPA, but he also wants more coal plants.
According to him, global climate change is a real and man-made, but he says that eventually Earth will be destroyed by the Sun, so we shouldn't do anything about climate change.

Of course, didn't say he's a good choice. Unfortunately he's the second best candidate available.

brimstoneSalad wrote:They only care if somebody attacks us. Defense only.

Yeah, or our allies. I generally agree with their foreign policies.
How has American interventionism served the world in the Middle East?

Obviously complete isolationism isn't a good thing, though, and I don't like the idea of turning away from helping people. But when we try to help, we unfortunately usually make things a lot worse.

brimstoneSalad wrote:Of course, didn't say he's a good choice. Unfortunately he's the second best candidate available.

Haha. Yeah, I know. Maybe if Hillary Clinton wasn't so influenced by corporate money, we'd have a better democratic candidate...

Even if we got money out of politics, Trump won the republican primaries without it. Republicans are apparently just crazy. I think the democratic party can be saved though!

EquALLity wrote:

brimstoneSalad wrote:They only care if somebody attacks us. Defense only.

Yeah, or our allies. I generally agree with their foreign policies.

I can sympathize.

EquALLity wrote:But when we try to help, we unfortunately usually make things a lot worse.

Except the case of things like agricultural technology, like new strains of crops. When we intervene by introducing peaceful technology, the results can be pretty good. It's more when we intervene by introducing weapons.

EquALLity wrote:Haha. Yeah, I know. Maybe if Hillary Clinton wasn't so influenced by corporate money, we'd have a better democratic candidate...

I don't think so, because I don't think she's strongly influenced by corporate money, and I don't think corporate money is always bad: it depends on the corporation. An oil company is bad, but a tech company might be good.
But look at the TPP; something Hillary supported because of corporate influence, and then turned against because of public opinion. (Also something that massively benefits poorer countries while siphoning money from rich ones... so yeah, which is worse now, corporate money or the public? Because the latter clearly controls Clinton as far as I can tell.)

brimstoneSalad wrote:As a libertarian, I thought it came with the territory?

Libertarians don't care about international politics; it's kind of a "mind your own business" thing.
I think the bigger issue is that libertarianism doesn't work. Johnson isn't a very strict libertarian, though, which is to his credit. He supports the EPA, for example.

Why doesn't it work? Maybe not in its pure form, sure.. but hasn't America historically been the most economically libertarian country there was? I'd say that has worked out well

knot wrote: Why doesn't it work? Maybe not in its pure form, sure.. but hasn't America historically been the most economically libertarian country there was? I'd say that has worked out well

Not in its pure form, and not as advocated by the majority of people who identify as libertarian. That is not to say that there is not some benefit to deregulating some things, simplifying legislation, and giving citizens more liberty in situations where actions don't affect others.
But people tend toward ignorance and stupidity in many ways, and sometimes giving them the freedom to pursue that (like with alternative medicine) is nothing short of a death sentence -- en masse. It's not necessarily something society can survive.

brimstoneSalad wrote:

knot wrote: Why doesn't it work? Maybe not in its pure form, sure.. but hasn't America historically been the most economically libertarian country there was? I'd say that has worked out well

Not in its pure form, and not as advocated by the majority of people who identify as libertarian. That is not to say that there is not some benefit to deregulating some things, simplifying legislation, and giving citizens more liberty in situations where actions don't affect others.
But people tend toward ignorance and stupidity in many ways, and sometimes giving them the freedom to pursue that (like with alternative medicine) is nothing short of a death sentence -- en masse. It's not necessarily something society can survive.

I don't see the problem with alternative medicine, as long as long as it's not given an official stamp of approval by the government that would be reserved for treatments that have been proven to work. I agree people are ignorant and stupid, which is why I think libertarianism makes sense, since it's a system under which people have to pay for their own choices. In my view, welfare systems or socialist models are fundamentally immoral, as they tend to incentivize bad behaviour and burden responsible people with the costs of choices made by irresponsible people. The size of government should also be minimal and restrained, because it sucks at doing most of anything right, and because people will vote for stupid and counterproductive policies that affect others (e.g. minimum wage). The extreme example is communism where a relatively small group of intellectuals have to make choices on behalf of the masses, which ultimately doesn't work, since you end up cutting off a large reservoir of knowledge that would be available in a free market.

knot wrote: I don't see the problem with alternative medicine, as long as long as it's not given an official stamp of approval by the government that would be reserved for treatments that have been proven to work.

You're OK with con artists freely preying on the weak and uneducated? And not just to steal grandma's retirement fund, but to cost people their lives with lies?

Also: How do you decide what to give an official stamp or approval? Or are there just no such stamps? Do you rely on private companies to offer such stamps, and let people guess which ones to trust and which are frauds, or determine by trial and error based on who is dying more?
Does everybody have to spend all of their free time educating themselves in order to avoid dying from being taken advantage of?

Let's say I get a respiratory tract infection. Without government to tell me which doctors are credible, I'd have to drop EVERYTHING I do and spend weeks or months doing research, and by the time I find credible treatment, I may already be dead. I won't even be able to trust the sources I go to, so I'd have to do research on the research etc. Ultimately, I might have to re-invent medicine from scratch on my own. Or take a leap of faith and just guess between a number of companies offering a cure and hope I choose right. It's doesn't even take a stupid person to guess wrong when the information can't be trusted.

knot wrote: I agree people are ignorant and stupid, which is why I think libertarianism makes sense, since it's a system under which people have to pay for their own choices.

They're paying for their trust in others. When social trust breaks down to that degree, you cause all kinds of problems. Consumer confidence is a critical factor in economic strength. You're throwing everybody into the shitter because you don't like a few people taking advantage and a few inefficiencies. It's much worse without government.

Or do you think people somehow deserve bad things to happen to them -- that this is morally good as retribution -- for being stupid? What moral framework justifies that for you?
And this special definition of "stupid" as I explained above, would be basically the lack of knowledge that's impossible to have since the sources of knowledge themselves couldn't be trusted. It's not stupid by any reasonable definition -- it's just being punished for not guessing right and not being lucky enough.

You must feel pretty lucky to want to live in a system like that.

knot wrote: In my view, welfare systems or socialist models are fundamentally immoral, as they tend to incentivize bad behaviour and burden responsible people with the costs of choices made by irresponsible people.

Some people do this, but most do not. They help far more people who need it than people who are taking advantage of them. There will always be people exploiting the systems. Some 1% exploiting them shouldn't be enough to justify dismantling those systems when overall they're doing more good than harm.

If you have ideas for a BETTER system, that's great. But it needs to be evidence based to do more good or less harm, not just throw the chips on the flow and let them land how they may. Anarchy and lack of oversight is known to do more harm than good compared to what we have. Obviously it's not perfect and it should be improved, but throwing it out is not the answer.

knot wrote: The size of government should also be minimal and restrained, because it sucks at doing most of anything right, and because people will vote for stupid and counterproductive policies that affect others (e.g. minimum wage).

Taking government away isn't better than an incompetent government.
We need to improve what we have by using more evidence based governing, rather than ideology based governing that assumes your ideology has the magical solution that will make everything better -- which is what you're doing, just from another perspective (libertarian rather than Democrat, Republican, or Communist).

Rule by ideology is moronic. You're not advocating anything different here, and you aren't bringing any evidence to bear with respect to the consequences.

knot wrote: The extreme example is communism where a relatively small group of intellectuals have to make choices on behalf of the masses, which ultimately doesn't work, since you end up cutting off a large reservoir of knowledge that would be available in a free market.

Anarchism is just as much a problem. You're making an appeal to an extreme. https://www.logicallyfallacious.com/tools/lp/Bo/LogicalFallacies/30/Appeal-to-Extremes

Just because Communism is bad, which is one form of government requiring rigid oversight, doesn't mean libertarianism is good as its opposite.
There are middle grounds that can be better than either extreme.

I can't believe I have to argue this.