lewrockwell.com — My name is Charles Adams, author of a 20-year study, entitled, For Good and Evil: The Impact of Taxes on the Course of Civilization. History reveals that most great empires taxed themselves to death, while others became great because of the right kind of taxes – taxes that stimulated growth, peace and commerce. If the Congress decides it is time to
Oct 21, 2006 View in Crawl 4
Closed AccountOct 22, 2006
"The rich have more than enough to give to the poor, and the poor don't actually need that much to become self-sufficient. If someone doesn't force the rich to give their money to the poor, the majority of them simply won't."That statement just underlines the fundamental difference between Americans and Socialists.
Closed AccountOct 22, 2006
Repeal the income tax. Implement Fair Tax. Stop all socialist programs. Encourage private charities and donations to replace our social programs. Provide incentives for businesses and homeowners to use renewable energy sources through government grants, loans, and/or rebates. Eliminate our need for foreign oil. Withdraw from the Middle East and let the Muslims run their governments the way they want to. All our problems solved.
thereOct 22, 2006
Rand has slowly been poisoning traditional American values. Advocates have infiltrated all the parties to various degrees but primary Libertarian and Republican in the form of neocons. (political expedience).. There are literally tens of millions of people that read Rand and think they are the cliche elite. (an impossibility of course). In practice these Rand-lites know extremely little about actual full time Oists values but they promote themselves as if they do. Most affluent people don't buy into this capitalism meet scientology but unfortunately some do and this acts as a feedback advertising for others to join. It has been especially faddy since the fall of the Soviet Union and lures in primarily "new money" (who I suspect don't know how to handle the guilts and responsibility that come with wealth) The phrase "power corrupts" somes to mind.The reality is as elitists, Oists ONLY value highly successful individuals in their cult (very often lawyers and the rest of as are subhuman. They shower them with flattery and suggest the taxes they pay should be considered "theft". (when of course in reality if they don't pay.. it is theft) The caveat is that it is a closed system... meaning you have to agree with all their principles or you are essentially evil. (think of it as a religion without the religion) This makes it a very authoritarian system. (why they tend to be called "Randroids") They say they are against the "initiation of force" but they are very flexible with what the word "initiation" actually means.(In other words offense and defense are interchangable if the heirarchy says its "rational") This is especially scary considering they advocate the US of nuclear weapons. While no doubt there are hapless followers that are well intended (as I'm sure some facists were) in practice Rand seems to be the capitalistic equivalent of the jihad meme. It takes normal capitalism (life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness) and twists it into an absolutist opportunistic free-for-all. I believe the reason why so many Americans are so unhappy these days is exactly because of these types of negative values. They rob us all of a sense of community. How many times has history warned we should consider these attitudes "evil" and responsible for destroying our social fabric?. Human beings are communal creatures by nature. Why would we be posting on Digg otherwise? It really disheartens me when I hear people that want to return to such a barbaric view of the world. However I'm just another POS average jo so I am incapable of higher brain function. Hmmm.... maybe I should welcome my new overlords before they arrange to have me killed as a necessary casuality to accomplish their self-interest.
joybranOct 22, 2006
wrong spot, digg down
thereOct 23, 2006
.............." I even agree that many of them have taken an elitist attitude.".............. There is no Oist on this planet who is not an elitist..............."However, some of Rand's ideas about individualism were groundbreaking".............. Please name me one. Self-interest? Hedonists thousands of years ago. Lassaiz-faire? Term existed before her. Capitalism? Centuries before. Elitism? Kings, Emperors, Czars, Eugenics, Aryans, etc...She's a writer... sorta like L. Ron Hubbard. Good for read not cultish devotion. ............"They believe it is more moral for someone to starve to death than for people to be moderately taxed to help them. (In this scenario they will indeed use government force to prevent the hungry from eating if necessary)"This is a false dichotomy. ............. You disagree with this assessment but I am just the reporter here. I've asked this question of Oists and that's their answer..............The question is not either people starve to death or people are moderately taxed to help them. People still starve to death under moderate taxation or even under very high taxation. The question is whether people would starve to death if there were no taxation. The libertarian position is that there would be less starvation in a free society, for many reasons which I won't go into here............. There is no starvation now in our society. There was when there was no taxation. In much of Africa today... taxation is nonexistant............."They believe your children should remain uneducated if you can't pay for private schools."I don't think anyone, even among the strictist Randians, believes this. ............ Again, you are misinformed. Go to an Oist forum. Present the scenario where no charity or tax is available... and see what they say should happen. I'm not making this crap up. I dabbled in the far right years ago until I started learning more about the details of hardened followers. It was a very positive experience because it scared the sh~t out of me enough to appreciate the enormous complexities and intellect that went into creating our mostly equaitable society. ..........The libertarian position is that, without compulsory government education, many different kinds of education would develop and parents would be free to find the best kind for their childrens' specific needs and abilities. At the same time, many different ways to pay for those different kinds of education would develop. Again, I'm not going to take the time to argue the case, but just to state the position........... This is no longer the 18th century. Virtually every kid in America already gets some sort of an education. (unlike the 19th century when there weren't taxes to support this). This education turns most kids into productive adults with very little unemployment. We would risk everything for what? 1-5 % in highly questionable theoretical improvement in efficiency? For what? Some utopian moral theory? I'd prefer to throw that on the pile with communism and facism that also had their chances too. I'm not interested in "but we'll get it right this time". The pain of the wrongness of it last time is still fresh in the human consciousness. Maybe in a few thousand years someone will consider it again. I wish them the best of luck............The pure libertarian position is that ALL government services, including police and military, could be better handled by free markets............ So if someone starts creating weapons what would stop them from becoming emperor or king? The free markets? Why didn't that stop them the last few thousand years then?Again...sorry... but we can't take the chance. We must trust that history teachs us something. Modern freedom is incredibly rare when we look from the perspective of the entire history of man. Everyone has a say. I believe in Democracy and I do everything reasonable I can in my power to preserve it. Every law that is changed needs to be carefully considered. There are reasons why these laws arose to begin with..........The fact that SpaceShipOne was able to do the same thing for $20 million that it took NASA hundreds of billions of dollars to do proves that private enterprise can do space exploration better than a government boondoggle can. ......... Untrue. Rutan had hundreds of billions of dollars worth of free research handed to him on a platter. No corporation has the incentive to invest that sort of cash for dubious rewards. How many manned orbital flights have free-markets accounted for in the 60 years we've been going to space. Answer: ZERO. Even the Russian space tourism progrram depends on government rockets. Furthermore the trickle down effects of rocket technology has lead to all sorts of technological benefits and derivative industries that the free markets have benefited from. From exotic materials to satellites and everything that uses these things. We have all received a net benefit from this. I believe in using government sparingly but it has areas where it has a track record superior to free-markets. ..... we would all be better off if we weren't forced to fund government "services."..... I do not believe so. What you call government force... I call government rule. I may want to walk into a government vault to take their money. Government passed rules against this. You may want to steal from government by not paying taxes... but there are rules for this too. You can argue to change the rules but if you truly believe in democratic principles you must abide by our mutual rules... or it is you who is initiating force and stealing. People both rich and poor abuse the system. If there is no system... we'll eventually end up in sitution like Darfur..........Again, this is ridiculous. Libertarians care as much about the environment, wildlife, and especially human beings as anyone else does. We just believe that the best way to care for all these values is freedom..........How is freedom going to stop people from buying cheaper forms of energy that create CO2 emissions? How is freedom going to stop people from using CFCs? As far as I can tell only laws and regulations do that..........even Objectivists don't want to "run the government." Like pure libertarians, they want to get the government out of running peoples' lives. Second, they don't want to change laws, they want to get rid of all the laws that do more harm than good to real people, which is certainly in the "public interest." ......... Absolute not. Oists don't care remotely about building a better society. They care about property rights and don't give a damn if it makes for a better society for others or not. However i don't believe it ends there. I believe even those ones are pawns to the bigger fish. -----------Third, pure libertarians believe that letting you make your own decisions about what is in your own interests is better for all of us, as long as you aren't aggressing against others, which includes forcing others to pay for what YOU think is best.----------- Unless you are an anarchist.. there is some form of government. This government will need to be funded. We don't do what YOU personally think is best with those funds and the methods we derive to get them. In a free society we vote on it. Thus we are where we are.-----------'he difference between libertarians and most people is we understand that we can't have our individual freedom unless we help you have yours. We don't want to rule you but to free you. Can you say the same? Or are you one of those people who thinks that freedom is highly overrated?----------- I already feel free. I fear many in rightwing have lost sight of what the term "free" has actually come to mean. It's a word that most of us use to describe our form of government today. Not some yesteryear when there was no taxation...great inequalities... inability to express onself....and slavery.What you want is indeed something.. but you shouldn't call in "freedom" if you wish to be coherent to others. I feel you are unwittingly attempting to return us to the tyranny of the past because on some level you are unhappy with world. While I sympathize... I must remain vigiliant so others can enjoy what I have enjoyed.
thereOct 23, 2006
The rightwing policies under Bush have lead to a dramatic increase in the gap between the rich and the average working jo. Now taxes will need to be increased to pay for the deficits that these irresponsible fiscal policies of the right have created. Under Democrats there were huge surpluses and the economy boomed. (btw -Adam Smith is mostly for Randroids (aka Spambots) that try to manipulate others with unauthentic arguments)
Closed AccountOct 24, 2006
The Democrats are willing to compromise on any issues since they are in the minority right now. It's the Republicans that are refusing to work with the Democrats.