Are they willing to let the world burn?

Discussion in 'Environment & Conservation' started by bricklayer, Feb 9, 2020.

  1. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    nope, I'm pointing out to both of you that comparing owning a human to owning land is retarded, just like most of georgist arguments.
     
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  2. drluggit

    drluggit Well-Known Member

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    Gosh, you seem shocked that folks could read through your narrative and diagnose what is so clearly there to see. Land ownership isn't evil. Period. How folks monetize their ownership of land isn't evil. What is evil is you entertaining the immoral narrative that you would ignore some rights for those you'd champion or otherwise assume ownership of yourself. That truly is what you've done here. You have appropriated a narrative simply to push a fanning of racial antagonism that you claim you're trying to reconcile. But, in your narrative, you inherently then don't give value to the rights of everyone as you advocate for only those you care about. That really isn't any different than the narrative of how slave owners in the 1850s pushed theirs. Yours is not an inclusive world, far from it.

    So, you tout the democratic narrative, and at the same time denigrate the same. That sounds self defeating at best. The democratic party has ever gnashed their teeth over "white entitlement" when it is the very foundation of your party. It's what democrats do, and have done for over a century now.

    I would advise you that land ownership in this country at least is literally there for those who would take responsibility for it. The cost of ownership vastly undercuts the cost of rents except in those markets that are, wait for it... primarily rich democratic places like NYC, LA, San Fransisco, etc. Land is clearly being used, in a fashion that you call out, and yet you still support the narrative as if it was generalized throughout the nation, which it is not.

    The fact that you don't understand that competitiveness allows one to become self sufficient or self reliant is then remarkable. If you don't understand that being competitive or educated is the key that opens the doors to becoming those things, it simply implies that you haven't made the effort. Folks overcome their most dire circumstances because they apply effort to doing so. That entirely undercuts your narrative here, and worse, you seem willing to advocate for subservience in the face of an ill that frankly your democratic party is the greatest villain of.

    So, you say you "oppose" the ownership of others rights, as if that actually means something. But you entirely ignore that the cure that you're advocating actually entirely ignores the rights of others. It's ludicrous.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  3. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No. You are not "pointing out" anything. You are only making a false and disingenuous claim, and pretending to be so retarded that you can't read or understand the many proofs I have given that owning people's rights to liberty is owning people's rights to liberty, no matter what form that ownership takes: owning their liberty to breathe, their liberty to drink, their liberty to eat, their liberty to go where they please and pursue their own lives, or their liberty to sustain themselves on the earth's surface. The only difference between owning a human being and owning land is that owning human beings forcibly removes their rights to liberty one person at a time, while owning land removes them one right at a time. You cannot dispute that fact with any facts or logic, so you just pretend to be retarded and deny it, because you have already realized that it proves your beliefs are false and evil.
     
  4. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, I am not shocked in the least that people feel so threatened by the truth that they have to falsely attribute to me statements I have not made and views I do not hold and have not expressed. It is normal, routine, and expected. Apologists for greed, privilege, injustice and evil always do it.
    It is always evil by definition unless the owner makes just compensation to the community of those whom he deprives of it. Period. Evil in the relevant sense is deliberate abrogation of others' rights with intent to inflict injustice. That describes landownership without just compensation to those forcibly excluded from the land. Evil must always be justified, and the only way to justify it is with lies. Lying to rationalize, justify and excuse evil is also evil. You may choose to reject that definition of evil, but I am prepared to defend it, and you will have to come up with a better one. I can promise you it will not be easy to defend a significantly different one against closely reasoned argumentation.
    Yes, it is, because any monetization of others' rights without making just compensation for what you are taking from them is evil.
    I can't fathom what you incorrectly imagine you think you might be talking about there. I'm not ignoring any rights; I'm distinguishing between the genuine, valid, equal individual rights of all to life, liberty, and property in the fruits of one's labor, and mere privileges dressed up as property "rights," like slave deeds and land deeds. And I don't propose to assume ownership of anyone's rights, only to abolish privilege dressed up as property rights.
    I didn't mention race, which only figures because in the USA, race was the rationalization for slavery. You did.
    Nope. Who has a right is completely irrelevant. The point at issue is what is a right. All have equal individual rights as described above.
    No, I already proved your claims false: I advocate the same rights for all.
    Name a better system than accountable democracy.
    I'm not a democrat. You made a mistake. Are you willing to learn from it?
    Just as slave ownership was: for those willing and able to purchase others' rights. And just as validly.
    What does that even mean? The cost of owning land is simply being asked to repay a (usually small) fraction of what you are taking from everyone else in the community.
    I'm only calling out use of land as a means to get something for nothing.
    Garbage. If one can run a little faster on the treadmill than one's fellows, one can get ahead of them. But when everyone on the treadmill is trying to run faster, the treadmill just goes faster, and everyone has to run that much faster just to avoid falling off the back. But the privileged riding up at their leisure on the escalator the treadmill powers want the treadmill inmates to think they will be able to escape.
    Of course one can with effort and training become strong enough to run the treadmill while carrying a free rider on one's back. But how does that justify blaming those who are not strong enough to run the treadmill while carrying free riders? How does it justify the free rides the free riders get from their beasts of burden?
    Yeah, yeah: "Shut up and get back on the treadmill." I know your tricks.
    Oh, to be sure. But WHY ARE THEY FORCED INTO SUCH DIRE CIRCUMSTANCES THAT MOST ARE NOT STRONG ENOUGH TO OVERCOME THEM, HMMMM???
    Nope. Refuted above. It does nothing of the sort, and only exposes you as a predictable, blame-the-victim apologist for greed, privilege and injustice.
    I'm not a democrat. You made a mistake. Are you willing to learn from it?
    It definitely means something, and you know it. You just have to contrive some means to avoid knowing it. Hence your ridiculous, fallacious, and disingenuous garbage.
    That is objectively false. It ignores no one's rights. It just correctly identifies privileges as not being rights.
     
  5. a better world

    a better world Well-Known Member

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    The real problem for "eco-doomsayers" is they cannot or will not confront head-on the cost of the transition from fossil to green.

    The tragedy is - the cost is a non-issue, because the resources, technology and knowhow are available, so the "money can be printed" for the specific purpose of funding the transition, without causing inflation, because no excess demand on available resources will be created. (Whereas supple of money is unlimited, supply of resources is the issue; if some resource reallocation from the alcohol/sugar drinks and junk food industry is required, so be it...to save the planet)

    As the (conservative, "coal loving") Australian PM said recently, "I can't commit to zero emissions by 2050, without detailing how we are going to pay for it". (Note: the Oz economy depends on shipping coal and iron ore, for most of its export income).

    So there it is.

    Of course you are both a climate denier (which doesn't matter) AND committed to neoliberal monetarist economics...which DOES matter, because the market will never fund the transition WITHOUT massive increase in energy prices which "eco-doomsayers" don't seem to worry about because they themselves can probably afford to pay more...

    So YOU hide behind "compulsion" when your monetarist neoliberal economics is the problem.

    Note: recently Powell agreed the Fed has unlimited currency issuing capacity:

    https://www.rollingstone.com/politi...coronavirus-fed-bank-bailout-disaster-976086/

    The Fed “balance sheet” as of Friday was already at $5.3 trillion, nearly $800 billion higher than its previous peak in May 2016. Wall Street analysts are predicting this number will eventually reach $10 trillion, and why not? Fed chief Jerome Powell signalled that assistance would be unlimited when he said the central bank would not run out of ammunition”.
     
    Last edited: Apr 3, 2020
  6. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    of course I am, and have been for a while. I've pointed out comparing owning a human to owning land is moronic, and retarded.
     
  7. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No. You have only falsely claimed that, while pretending to be so retarded that you do not understand the many proofs I have given that it is false.
     
  8. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Except as you know I’ve shown you how and why it’s retarded to compare owning a human to owning a land parcel. All you georgists arguments are similarly retarded
     
  9. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No you haven't. You have never even offered an argument. While I have proved in several different ways that landowning is not only comparable to, not only similar to, but EQUIVALENT to slavery, all you can do is repeat your disgraceful and cretinous "retarded" claim.
    <yawn> That will be news to the dozens of eminent western economists, including four -- count 'em FOUR -- Nobel laureates in economics, who signed the following statements:

    "The movement of the Soviet Union to a market economy will greatly enhance the prosperity of your citizens.... But there is a danger that you will adopt features of our economies that keep us from being as prosperous as we might be. In particular, there is a danger that you may follow us in allowing most of the rent of land to be collected privately.

    It is important that the rent of land be retained as a source of government revenue. While the governments of developed nations with market economies collect some of the rent of land in taxes, they do not collect nearly as much as they could, and they therefore make unnecessarily great use of taxes that impede their economies--taxes on such things as incomes, sales and the value of capital.

    Social collection of the rent of land and natural resources serves three purposes. First, it guarantees that no one dispossesses fellow citizens by obtaining a disproportionate share of what nature provides for humanity. Second, it provides revenue with which governments can pay for socially valuable activities without discouraging capital formation or work effort, or interfering in other ways with the efficient allocation of resources. Third, the resulting revenue permits utility and other services that have marked economies of scale or density to be priced at levels conducive to their efficient use.

    The rental value of land arises from three sources. The first is the inherent natural productivity of land, combined with the fact that land is limited. The second source of land value is the growth of communities; the third is the provision of public services. All citizens have equal claims on the component of land value that arises from nature. The component of land value that arises from community growth and provision of services is the most sensible source of revenue for financing public services that raise the rental value of surrounding land. These services include roads, urban transit networks, parks, and public utility networks for such services as electricity, telephones, water and sewers. A public revenue system should strive to collect as much of the rent of land as possible, allocating the part of rent derived from nature to all citizens equally, and the part derived from public services to the governmental units that provide those services. When governments collect the increase in land value that results from the provision of services, they are able to offer services at prices that represent the marginal social cost of these services, promoting efficient use of the services and enhancing the rental value of the land where the services are available. Government agencies that use land should be charged the same rentals as others for the land they use, or services will not be adequately financed and agencies will not have adequate incentive or guidance for economizing on their use of land.

    Some economists might be tempted to suggest that the rent can be collected publicly simply by selling land outright at auction. There are a number of reasons why this is not a good idea. First, there is so much land to be turned over to private management that any effort to dispose of all of it in a short period would result in an extreme depression in prices offered. Second, some persons who could make excellent use of land would be unable to raise money for the purchase price. Collecting rent annually provides access to land for persons with limited access to credit. Third, subsequent resale of land would enable speculators to make large profits unrelated to any productive services they offer, resulting in needless inequity and dissatisfaction. Fourth, concern about future political conditions would tend to depress offers. Collecting rent annually permits the citizens of future years to capture the benefits of good future public policies. Fifth, because investors tend to be averse to risk, general uncertainty about the future will tend to depress offers. This risk aversion is sidestepped by allowing future rental payments to be determined by future conditions. Finally, the future rent of land can more justly be claimed by future generations than by today's citizens. Requiring annual payments from the users of land allows each year's population to claim that year's rent. While the proceeds of sales could be invested for the benefit of future generations, not collecting the money in advance guarantees the heritage of the future against political excesses.
    ...
    A balance should be kept between allowing the managers of property to retain value derived from their own efforts to maintain and improve property, and securing for public use the naturally inherent and socially created value of land. Users of land should not be allowed to acquire rights of indefinite duration for single payments. For efficiency, for adequate revenue and for justice, every user of land should be required to make an annual payment to the local government, equal to the current rental value of the land that he or she prevents others from using."


    Pretending to be retarded in order to evade facts that prove your beliefs are false and evil is despicable.
     
  10. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    You’re fully aware that I have.
     
  11. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Yes, it is, which is why you had to make it up. I haven't compared a human to a land parcel. I have stated the fact that owning other people's rights to liberty by owning a land deed is equivalent to owning other people's rights to liberty by owning a slave deed. In both cases, the ownership deed is a deed to other people's liberty rights. The only difference is that owning slaves converts people's rights to liberty into other people's property one person at a time, owning land does it one right at a time.

    You are aware that your cretinous claim is not only not a refutation, it is not even an argument. It's just you jamming your fingers in your ears and going, "Lalallala I can't hear you!"
     
  12. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    and I've refuted that argument. Owning land and owning a human are in no way comparable. You, nor anyone else has ever or will ever have a right to property that I already own. If you want it, you will have to make me an offer. If i reject it, you will have to go **** yourself.
     
  13. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    If you don't oppose others being legally entitled to take what is rightly yours, you will never be a man.
     
  14. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, you most certainly have not. You have never even offered an argument to that effect, because that would require offering some contrary facts or logic, and you are not able to do that. Are you are able to do is jam your fingers in your ears and chant, "Lalalalaa I can't hear you." Watch:
    See?

    As you know, I have proved in several different ways that they are comparable, because owning other people's liberty rights is not only comparable to, not only similar to, but equivalent to owning other people's liberty rights, no matter what form the ownership of their rights takes: slave deed, land deed, IP monopoly, taxi medallion, etc.
    Everyone will always have a right to take from others any property that consists of their rights, as land deeds and slave deeds do. No land title has ever been based on anything but forcible dispossession of all who would otherwise be at liberty to use the land, and any "property" that is based on nothing but force is just as validly overturned by force.
    Or strike down the law that gives you uncompensated ownership of my right to liberty. That would certainly be more just than paying you for what government, the community, and nature provide.
    Oh? Is that what happened when slave owners rejected the abolitionists' more than generous offer to give them their rights to life in payment for the liberty rights of others that they falsely claimed were their rightful property? Or did the slave owners have to either relinquish their unjust ownership of others' rights to liberty, or rightly pay for them with their lives?
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2020
  15. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    of course I have, as you know.

    but we both know that you haven't, because the two are in no way comparable.
    I sincerely wish you luck in trying to take my property from me, lol.
     
  16. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, you are just makin' $#!+ up again. There are other ways to get money without earning it besides privilege: e.g., by far most commonly, gifts, especially inheritances. To get it by privilege, one has to get it by being legally entitled to benefit from the abrogation of others' rights without making just compensation. Almost everyone benefits from one privilege or another, one way or another, and I have made a modest amount of money that way through both landholding and IP. But I'm sure most of the money I've received without earning it has been through inheritance from my parents. The key difference between getting money without earning it through gifts or inheritance and getting it through privilege is that getting a gift or inheritance does not forcibly deprive anyone else of anything they would otherwise have. Profiting from privilege does.
     
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  17. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No you haven't, as you know. You have never offered a single factual or logical argument to dispute any of my proofs. Because you can't. All you can do is stick your fingers in your ears and chant your already-proved-false and self-evidently absurd and disingenuous claim that owning one of all other peoples’ rights to liberty through a land deed is not comparable to owning all of one other person’s rights to liberty through a slave deed.
    We both know I have proved to you many times that owning land and owning human beings are not only comparable, not only similar, but equivalent in their implications for the landless because in both cases, what is owned is others’ rights to liberty:

    Proof #1. The logical example of Dirty Rahl and the thirsty man at the waterhole
    Proof #2. The historical testimony of people who actually WERE slaves, who stated that they were actually worse off after emancipation (a fact noted with puzzlement in the popular media at the time) because they had to pay landowners full market value just for permission to work, shop, access public services and infrastructure, and even exist
    Proof #3. The logical example of Crusoe and Friday on the island
    Proof #4. The many historical examples of the effective enslavement, starvation and legalized murder of the landless by landowners, such as in the Irish “potato” famine of the 1840s, which is just one of countless such historical examples
    Proof #5. The slave-like condition of the landless in EVERY SINGLE SOCIETY IN THE HISTORY OF THE WORLD where private landowning has been well established, but government has not intervened massively in the economy through minimum wage laws, income support programs, labor standards laws, publicly funded education, pensions and health care, etc. to rescue the landless from enslavement by landowners
    Etc.
    Thanks. If I don't, SAI will. Take it to the bank.
     
  18. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    True. Inheritance itself is not an issue. This anti-inheritance obsession that one often hears about is strikingly comparable to Reiver's failure at getting the correct causal chain into his head with regards to how economic rent and capital gain are related. Probably based on the same nonsense. Probably Marxist/socialist nonsense, hmm? Yes, unjust property and unjustly obtained wealth can be and often is component of inheritance, but that makes the unjust property and unjustly obtained wealth the problem, not that people are allowed to pass their possessions and property to their kids. So, as I've seen you write, let's strike at the root of evil and eliminate the causes rather than band aid solutions that would itself cause injustice by violating the parents' rights.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2020
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  19. rahl

    rahl Banned

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    Proven false

    Proven false. You do not not have you ever had a right to property I own.


    Neither of you have any chance what so ever or taking my property lol.
     
  20. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    No, you are aware that you have never offered any factual or logical arguments for your claims, let alone a proof.
    No, you are aware that you have never offered any factual or logical arguments for your claims, let alone a proof.
    Everyone has a right to take any property from others that consists of their rights.
    :lol: Do you really think SAI will be persuaded by your demand to own others' rights to liberty, supported by your "argument" that consists of jamming your fingers in your ears and chanting, "Lalalalaa I can't hear you"? Or that you will have any chance whatever of resisting liberty and justice secured by government? To think so would be, shall we say, a bit cognitively challenged.
     
  21. gottzilla

    gottzilla Banned

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    Slight correction: It's not merely the unjustly obtained wealth itself that is the problem either, it's the unjust privilege that can also lead to such accumulations that is the problem. You strike that away and such unjustly obtained wealth wouldn't accumulate in the first place. That's what I meant. I know that you probably know what I mean, so this slight adjustment probably wasn't even necessary. I can be very nitpicky with details.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2020
  22. bricklayer

    bricklayer Well-Known Member Past Donor

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    You mean like Jesus?
     
  23. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    Right. The problem is what is unjustly taken from others, not what is unjustly obtained thereby. Taking a loaf of bread from a bakery without paying for it is just as wrong whether you enjoy eating it or drop it in a mud puddle and get no benefit from it whatever. Either way, you have deprived others of it.

    That is why the left always gets it wrong by railing against the symptoms of privilege like billionaire inheritances, corporate profits, low wages, excessive executive compensation, high rents, homelessness, etc. and proposing misguided "solutions" like higher welfare payments, organizing labor unions, higher minimum wages, rent control, income tax, public housing projects, etc.: they are focused on their envy for those who benefit, rather than the rights of those who are harmed.

    Would it be OK if rich, greedy, privileged parasites squandered all their ill-gotten gains on debaucheries and Ponzi schemes instead of passing them on to their heirs intact?? Would it be OK for a multinational company to deprive indigenous people of access to their traditional water sources as long as the company's managers were so incompetent as to make no profits from the firm's privilege??
    Better to get the details right. Logic teaches us that getting even the tiniest detail wrong can lead to a completely wrong answer. Or as Modesty Blaise said, "Details can make the impossible possible."
     
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  24. bringiton

    bringiton Well-Known Member

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    :lol: You are actually citing Jesus as someone who had no objection to privilege??

    "Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for someone who is rich to enter the kingdom of God."
    -- Matthew 19:24
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2020
  25. Pycckia

    Pycckia Well-Known Member

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    How is collecting rent privilege? Seems to me to be a voluntary contract between renter and landlord. Did you seize the land through eminent domain?

    I doubt I have made any money through forcibly depriving anyone of anything. They have all been mutually agreed upon transactions.

    Most of the money I have I got through selling shares to idiots who thought they would get rich by buying them.
     
    Last edited: Apr 5, 2020

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