Their "compassion" is based on theft
Posted by Anen-o-me@reddit | Libertarian | View on Reddit | 90 comments
Posted by Anen-o-me@reddit | Libertarian | View on Reddit | 90 comments
bingobng12@reddit
Your "compassion" is based on wishing to grant irrational individuals maximal freedom and then proceeding to blame governments for all recessions and depressions
Foundation1914@reddit
Just because you have no empathy in your heart does not mean it is true for others. I gain happiness from helping others and sharing my love. You will never make me feel shame for that. Never again.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
I have empathy for others.
I'm saying it's not empathy to steal from X to give to Y.
Foundation1914@reddit
Oh wow, all these replies and I didn't see that the OP responded, my b.
I would agree with you on that regarding taxes, because taxation without consent is just semi-justified banditry. The thing about that is, homie, you posted a meme of a woman with pink hair. Which leads me to believe you're also talking about things like charity, social organization, and the desire to offer up your labor for others to enjoy.
Makes me think you're talking about a lifestyle, rather than an economic concept. Makes me think you're talking about MY lifestyle, which is what prompted the admitted highly emotionally charged original comment.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
So you assumed based on a comic hair color? I didn't create the comic btw. The characters mean nothing to me.
You should ask, not assume.
Foundation1914@reddit
"Leads me to believe" is me not assuming, dude. That's how the English language works. I did not make a definitive statement SPECIFICALLY to avoid that.
You clearly just want conflict and to be correct. There's no value in had discussing anything with you, since you will not accept any challenge to your worldview, even in when made in the most good faith attempt possible.
DravenTor@reddit
Giving of your own volition is a blessing unto yourself. the choice being removed from your hands and reallocated without your input... That's just slavery. And even if you agreed, what government actually does with your money is never the same as what they tell you.
Oneroom02@reddit
The goverment and the infrastructure it provides makes it so you can have a business. The people of a nation makes your business run, and you owe your prosperity to them. You can't just benefit from society and then be an entitled bitch because you don't want to pay your fair share. Obviously infinity taxes aren't a solution so let's see the taxation rate of the golden age of american capitalism... oh wait.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
Paying for things means you don't owe anything to anyone. If you make food and I buy it, neither of us owe the other anything thereafter.
Your logic does not work across market and society. The only people doing something for you is parents / family, and they owe you support and care because they brought you into this world without your consent. So you don't owe them, they owe you until you're an adult.
Government infrastructure? Paid with our taxes, so again, we don't owe a thing for it. If the government was using its own money to pay for infrastructure that would be a different thing, but the government HAS NO MONEY OF IT'S OWN, it's all taken from us by force.
Oneroom02@reddit
What mechanism secures you ability of doing transactions? Makes it so that you don't get killed for doing business? Punishes those who try to scam consumers? Who protects your ability of not getting killed because you have want to have a familly with who the fuck you want? You only want to privitize these mechanism that a GOVERMENT does, but that just doesn't work for the majority of people because there are market forces that most reasonable people consider unfair, and that's how we have a society.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
We pay for police too, that means we don't owe anyone anything for that either.
You can consider it unfair all you want, no one is forced to agree with you.
Oneroom02@reddit
It's not just police. It's the whole system of goverment. And if the people consider their living conditions unfair they will just kill you. And no private police will be perfect enough to protect you.
DravenTor@reddit
A blood thirsty Marxist would be unhappy with the standard of living they have provided themselves and expect others to supplement their lifestyle or die...
Oneroom02@reddit
I have common sense, the french revolution wasn't caused by marxists. The american independence movement wasn't caused by marxists. When people percieve things to be unfair they will kill the people they percieve to be the perpetuators. You're regarded.
DravenTor@reddit
No, you dont. Marxism is explicitly revolutionary. It requires the brutal overthrow and murder of its perceived oppressors. But as soon as they take over, they themselves become the oppressor by their own definition - those in control of the means of production and labor. That's why it only ever leads to more murder and death. You can't actually have Marxist revolutionaries in a Marxist country because they would be in a constant state of revolution. There MUST be purges to maintain the state's monopoly on all forms of production and labor.
Besides that, socialism itself is impossible. because central planning is impossible. The government will never be able to make all the unilateral decisions for an entire nation and have an effective flourishing economy.
Beauracracy explodes in size as they try to replace a free market full of free individuals, making billions of informed decisions based on that market about how best to be profitable. But, the state has no reference point because they are not participating in a free market that would inform their decisions on the proper economic choices. So, they make arbitrary decisions instead that lead to millions suffering poverty, starvation, and death.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
Again, WE PAY FOR ALL OF IT THROUGH TAXES. No one is doing us a favor, so we do not owe anything to them or others.
What are you even talking about now. You seem to think the State is magic.
Oneroom02@reddit
I think you don't or want to understand what I'm saying. If that's how you characterize what I'm saying as the most regarded stupid fuck, then you really can't conceive of a basic theory of mind.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
I heard what sounds like a dumb critique of a stateless society, about 3rd grade level critique I'd say. Got anything better.
BastiatF@reddit
If that were true everyone would have a successful business. In reality most business fail early on.
Oneroom02@reddit
No, you still have market forces. If you don't see how the govermemt makes it so that you can have a business without the risk of dying, I can't help you.
TheKorndawg720@reddit
The government and the infrastructure makes it so that only 3 mega corporations own 98% of the entire stock market while we get fucking scraps.
DravenTor@reddit
The Government does not create or provide anything. It takes from producers. Being able to provide a good product at competitive prices is what keeps your business running. Society benefits from the service and/or goods you provide to them. You don't owe them anything least of all the money you earned by your own efforts and risk. Very few actually paid that rate, plenty of loop holes. besides that, it wasn't the golden age because of a tax rate (lol) it was the golden age because we had just won World War 2, the dollar was now the world's reserve currency, and the US of A became the global super power.
You Marxist collectivism is a false god btw.
oWatchdog@reddit
This is the layman's rebuttal against libertarianism. It's quite alluring since it permits you moral superiority. I want to invite you to question your assumptions of libertarian supporters.
Libertarians do not condemn helping the poor and disenfranchised. They just don't see using the government and our taxes as a viable path towards those aims.
Putting faith in government to fix economic problems, abstain from corruption, and never abuse those powers now or in the future is not an empathetic choice.
Foundation1914@reddit
I am a Libertarian. I seek the destruction of the federal government by any means. I believe taxation without consent and conscription are crimes.
I also believe most people think that we all are inherently self interested people, which I disagree with to such a massive degree some might call it a trigger.
I do not think that people who are self interested are any less moral than those who are not. The dopamine I receive from helping others could be said to be just as much a selfish desire as a selfless one, since it makes me happy.
oWatchdog@reddit
I'm confused by your original comment then. What is it directed to?
Foundation1914@reddit
A rejection of the concept that our ideals about how to organize a society should be based on the pre-supposition that human beings are inherently selfish/primarily self-interested. This idea personally caused me alot of grief growing up, and I believe it is the same for others.
I think we should build something together with the idea that self-interest and empathy is a spectrum, and in fact the people on opposite ends of that spectrum are most likely highly complimentary towards each other, rather than oppositional.
SlickPope@reddit
I don't think you understood the post
Foundation1914@reddit
Every downvote you give out is empowerment. It reminds me of the purpose of fighting against your crusade to demonize people for being good humans, because it may effect how much money you can con and steal from others.
I embrace your hatred of me with euphoria.
SlickPope@reddit
I don't think you understood my comment either
Foundation1914@reddit
Educate me, if you dare
jesh_the_carpenter@reddit
This really isn't complicated. The point of the comic isn't that empathy or helping others is bad. It's that if we want to help people, we should do it ourselves instead of trying to force other people to do it (which one could argue is what proponents of taxation do).
I don't fully agree with this point, but come on, they're obviously not arguing against empathy or helping people.
Educational-Year3146@reddit
Being edgy doesn’t make you right.
It makes you look a fool.
Foundation1914@reddit
I'm edgy because I derive pleasure from seeing others happy? You'll genuinely have to explain how you're trying to offend/regaebait me here. I'm not getting it.
oboshoe@reddit
hatred? I think he was trying to educate you.
(seriously)
platte_ratte@reddit
Oh you’re such a GOOD person. You’re a literal angel. Not like us EVIL egoists who like to keep their eyes on their own plate. Surely you’d die as a martyr for mankind because you’re so GOOD 😑
Foundation1914@reddit
It makes perfect sense that you think I'm motivated by ego. I'm sure you can't imagine a world where humans gain dopamine from helping others. Our entire society was built on communal effort and care for each other, whether you want to believe that or not. Being good to each other is an INSTINCT, not the other way around, as you believe.
Barbados_slim12@reddit
Nobody's saying you can't have empathy. Helping people is a moral good, nobody here is arguing that. If you want to start a business and hire poor people, or even just donate your time and money to help them, good for you. That's supported 110%. The only stipulation in this post is that it has to be your time and money that's being donated. You can donate your time and resources because you inherently consent when you do the thing. I can't donate part of your paycheck on your behalf and claim moral superiority because I'm "helping the poor". That would be me stealing your money and the time it took you to earn it.
Routine_Medicine5882@reddit
"America deserves another 9/11"
This you, Mr Empathy?
smokeytrue01@reddit
You should feel those because you wanted to help and did, not because a corrupt government forced you to
Sentient-Exocomp@reddit
So if you want to give your own money, that is true charity. No one is criticizing that.
Trill-Protaganist@reddit
Imo, mega-corp bailouts are worse than government handouts for the masses.
eric_3196@reddit
To flip this, why is my money used to bail out massive corporations?
Realistic_Fish_1948@reddit
Nice whataboutism that no one disagrees with.
6point3cylinder@reddit
It shouldn’t be. Vast majority of libertarians also oppose bailouts.
haxdun@reddit
100%, it goes against fair market freedom and competition
TheKorndawg720@reddit
I get that I just have always thought about like when does the government step in on that. How do we balance that so that government can’t just take down any company it doesn’t agree with.
haxdun@reddit
Oh no, the government isn't the one directly taking down the industry, I'm talking about production lines naturally having to close due to either being inneficient or the people just not buying it anymore because of cultural or technological reasons.
Remember that, in general, libertarianism means less government intervention
TheKorndawg720@reddit
Quick question does this mean we should have the government shut down monopolies? This and honestly a mix of social and private healthcare like Germany have been the biggest things that the state should do in my opinion. But I hate it because then I feel borderline socialist at the thought😂
AlphaTangoFoxtrt@reddit
Who here says it should? Libertarians oppose government interference in markets.
Laurenslagniappe@reddit
Right? End socialism for the 1%. We pay more taxes than they do.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
Business taxes should be zero. Every dollar a business makes becomes someone income and is taxed as ordinary income. We don't need double taxation.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
We consistently oppose that as well so I don't know why you bring it up as if that's a gotch. Libertarians have always opposed corporate welfare and said 'let then fail' while the feds were bailing them out.
DividerOfBums@reddit
I don’t think it’s as consistent, many memes on the sub such as yours seem to target a strawman of a liberal person such as this, rather than a greedy corporatist, that your meme portrays as the cool, rational one.
MagicJava@reddit
Greed is profit motive that doesn’t bear the cost of negative externalities. Regulatory capture is how this happens.
DividerOfBums@reddit
Good thing we are all robots and that works out so well /s
7Goten3@reddit
You bring up a good point. Most libertarians and economists make the assumption that all humans are rational actors.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
Not perfectly rational, just self interested within the information you have. And that is absolutely true.
TheKorndawg720@reddit
Right but in a free market the people can use their biggest vote which is their dollar to fund companies and people that aren’t pieces of shit. This is why NAP is key in the libertarian government.
Murky_Substance3345@reddit
It shouldn’t be
natermer@reddit
Do you really want to know?
Because I know the reason why. But it is very unlikely you are going to like the answer. Mostly because there is really no "flip" here.
One of the nice things about this "New Age of AI" is that it is very easy to look up terms and get quick summaries about subjects with very minimal work. One of the major challenges of things like Reddit is expressing complicated and counter intuitive ideas and realities that run counter to common narratives.
But now it should be easy for anybody to look this stuff up. Just do a search for the terms and have Brave or Google or Duckduckgo or whatever search engine AI you prefer to use to summarize it for you.
Ever heard of the term "Corporatism"? If you want a definitive definition then the easy source is Encyclopedia Britannica. That one you might not want to trust AI for that one.
Historical examples of Corporatism are:
Fascism
Nazism
The New Deal
and a modern one:
The last one is globalist, btw.
Other terms/phrases to look up are:
"Wilsonian Administrative State".
"The role of Large public corporations in the administrative state".
Basically also these massive national publicly traded corporations are the results of Progressive Era reforms and elements of Administrative Theory put into practice in the 20th century.
Especially during WW1, The New Deal/Great Depression, and WW2.
Before the first Deleware General Corporation Law of 1895... Large corporations really didn't exist. That is the vast majority of businesses were entirely private law affairs. They were built using contracts and agreements between people.
There was a few pre-cursors to Delaware General Corporation law, like Manufacturing Corporate law in New York or a General Corporate Law of New Jersey (which was later repealed). But by and large if you wanted a corporation you had to go to state legisators petition them, and have them pass a bill creating your desired corporation.
What is more is that those corporations had limited lifespans and specific purpose. Meaning they had a definite lifespan that they would be dissolved automatically.
All of this changed with the beginning of the 20th century. Especially with the development of things like the Federal Reserve.
The basic idea of all of this is...
A Industrialized society is very hard to regulate. Especially ones the size of the USA.
You have thousands and thousands of little squabbling businesses running around competing with one another. They are ran by hard headed people largely interested only in themselves and the people that work for them. They are mostly unregistered and unregulated.
Having millions of people running around doing what they want, how they want, and when they want is just too much freedom for the progressives.
In other words.. Laissez Faire Capitalism is no good. They felt that unbridled competition lead to a race to the bottom mentality. They make stuff cheap as possible, fast as possible, and entirely for the individual needs and desires of the general public. That is no good.
Where is the civic spirit in that? How are the progressives going to stop things like race mixing and get the country on the same level as Europe with that mentality?
So here is what you do:
You setup a regulatory and credit system that heavily favors the creation of large corporations.
These corporations get a lot of legal protections. Like you can't sue individuals in the corporations or it's owners... you can only sue the corporation itself. That way people are only liable for the portion they invested.
Or that they are now eligible for vast cheap forms of credit and investment that are locked away from normal people and normal businesses.
They you pass a bunch of "antitrust" laws that gives the government some ability to regulate prices, eliminate secret pricing agreements, and control how and when companies merge. That sort of thing.
And then, over the decades, you arrange things so that you have 2 or 3 or 4 major public corporations that run entire industries.
You consolidate.
Then you invite them into government. They pay lobbyists, they get lawyers, advisors, and c-level executives on important regulatory committees in Congress to help design and draft regulations.
You make them partners, not adversaries, with all the various new Administrative Agencies you have for everything now. You have a agency for the environment, for food, for housing, for transportation, etc etc.
Big corporations that play ball get money, seat at the table, and all the fun things that go along with being in bed with the government.
That way instead of regulating thousands of competing businesses and millions of individuals...
They mainly can spend all their time regulating large corporations with, in turn, regulate you.
And that is the reason your money is used to bail out massive corporations.
Because massive corporations are critical to how our government operates.
They are not adversaries. They are friends. They need each other. They use each other.
All of this started in the late 19th century.
The American style corporatist state was put into practice from the early 1900's through the 1950s.
Every year it gets worse.
Now you should be caught up.
Welcome to the 21st century. Hope you like it here. It took a lot of work to get to this point.
What is more is that almost none of this happened in secret. It is just such a boring, banal, and planned out over such a long period that people just didn't really notice.
But you can read all about it in political and economic history if you look for it. It is all documented. People wrote books about it.
DravenTor@reddit
Amen, Brother.
Apokaliptor@reddit
That’s also theft
Educational-Year3146@reddit
Bailouts aren’t a libertarian concept.
That’s government intervention to keep a corporation afloat, which is not a free market principle.
DravenTor@reddit
In a free market free from government interference they would be allowed to fail and a healthy strong competitor would rise to replace them.
natermer@reddit
It is not compassion when it is other people's money.
rlpewpewpew@reddit
it's compassion when it's from the wealthy. . . . Ever heard of Robin Hood?
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
It's not a crime to be wealthy. Robin Hood stole from corrupt State officials.
rlpewpewpew@reddit
Perfect. We have plenty of those too.
natermer@reddit
Robin hood robbed the tax collectors.
PhilRubdiez@reddit
It’s definitely easier to be charitable with other people’s stuff.
natermer@reddit
It is easier to SAY you are charitable when it is other people's stuff.
Actually being charitable is impossible, though. Looting Peter to pay Paul isn't charity.
jijjijijijiiijiijiji@reddit
This brainless shitpost belongs on a MAGA Facebook page rather than a Libertarian subreddit. The wealth inequality in the US is absolutely staggering and to pretend otherwise is delusional.
There’s nothing wrong with compassion, but something tells me you see compassion as weakness and that is a foolish way to live. If circumstances out of your control resulted in you becoming destitute yourself, you might feel a bit differently watching 5-10 assholes rake in billions of dollars per year while you suffer. Or maybe not! “Hurt me daddy” types do exist.
DravenTor@reddit
There's nothing wrong with charity. But libertarians are not for Government redistributing wealth. That only causes more problems. That's socialism not libertarianism.
ochreundertones@reddit
True. However, the gov is currently redistributing wealth upwards via bailouts, lobbying, anti-union policies, and other shitty means.
Obviously libertarians are against this as well, but it’s happening, and it’s creating a situation that can’t be solved by simply “starting a business and employing people.” What are you gonna pay em, $20-25 an hour for entry level work? Great, they aren’t going to be able to save money, or go to the doctor, or even insure their car in most areas.
It’s not stupid to have social programs in place to help your neighbor not crash and burn while gov programs/practiced are in place that actively make it easier for them to crash and burn than a free market would.
We don’t have a free market, so let’s not be dicks to our countrymen while we try and fix that
natermer@reddit
Libertarians hate that, too.
Robbing people to pay corporations is just as bad as robbing people to pay poor people not to work.
DravenTor@reddit
Agreed. We should be cutting all government spending across the board though including military. So for people to advocate for more inefficient bureaucracy to solve their problems its just sad to me. Do they really not see they are getting less every time they ask for more government?
ochreundertones@reddit
I know that when I was laid off I didn’t really qualify for private charity, but state unemployment insurance kept me on my feet.
I know my friends in college who were working and studying hard and barely keeping up with rent and the general cost of living were able to stay on their feet and not exclusively eat beans partially thanks to $50-100 of student designated food stamps.
I know that the healthcare system has no economic motivation to change, and that if I didn’t have employer provided healthcare I would be in debt quite possibly forever without public health insurance if I had a serious surgery or got cancer I something. Or I’d just die.
I know that without public programs in place to help protect public lands and pay for science to understand ecology better, my beautiful state would be overdeveloped in a way that hurts people, we would be in a constant drought and wildfires because of it, no one could enjoy public land, we would dry up our reservoirs, and it’d be a shithole. (No, I’m not talking about Cali).
I know that this country was literally built on giving away plots of land to immigrants and without that my ancestors would’ve really struggled or never came instead of building a thriving agricultural base that’s still at work, and that if that was still a program it would be a net positive for folks.
Countless other examples.
Cut the waste and useless bureaucracy, but these programs are not what are burdening taxpayers.
DravenTor@reddit
I understand that these programs have helped at times but the larger claim of libertarianism is that these problems would have never existed if government had not intervened in the first place. There are always downstream or unseen effects that arise when the Federal Gov. make sweeping changes.
Take Obama Care for instance - healthcare for everyone working a fulltime job (sounds nice) but it had the "downstream effect" of businesses cutting employees to part time or even firing large swaths altogether. This primarily damaged small business and individual entrepreneurs because they operate on very thin margins and cant afford to pay benefits for several fulltime employees. We still are suffering from that. Most companies now only hire-in at part time and are very resistant to full time because of the added expense.
You mentioned college. College is extremely expensive because its subsidized by the government. So colleges continually raise tuition prices to get larger pay outs from the government. Mean while the college kid is saddled with larger and larger debt because of this system. As an aside I don't think everyone should be going to college anyways but that's part of their scheme to rope more suckers in.
I do agree with you about national parks though. I like having nature, haha!
jijjijijijiiijiijiji@reddit
Don’t tell me what I believe. I’ve been a registered Libertarian since the early 2000s and I know damn well what I am for and what I am against; I don’t need (or want) to hear your shitty opinion about what a “real Libertarian” is in order to establish my beliefs and distinguish right from wrong. There is a clear and obvious wealth distribution issue in this country — if this were a video game, the devs would’ve fixed it already. I never said anything about how the wealth gap should be fixed; I’m acknowledging that there’s a big problem and you should too.
Also… redistributing wealth causes more problems, eh? Can you show me examples and evidence of when we’ve tried it in the USA and it caused more problems than it solved?
Millions of regular US citizens work in such shitty jobs that they couldn’t even get approval to take time off to go see a doctor, and they certainly couldn’t afford to fix anything the doctor diagnoses. That’s pathetic; I work in Germany frequently and for a small state to have social healthcare / subsidized education / protection for renters tells me that the “largest economy in the world” has NO excuse not to treat citizens like cattle. But, meanwhile in the USA, a handful of people have more money than a hundred thousand regular people could ever spend in one lifetime. If you think that’s a non-issue and don’t want to do anything to fix that, I wouldn’t call you a member of the Libertarian Party. I would call you a member of the Asshole Party.
DravenTor@reddit
Are you sure you're Libertarian? What exactly are you insinuating in your OP then?
Don't be so quick to believe the propaganda. People are richer than ever, yes. The middle class is Shrinking, yes. But did you know the upper class is growing? It has nearly doubled in the last 50 years. and the lower class has only grown in size by 3%.
Per request- 16th amendment, The New Deal, Civil rights (you cant legislate away racism and all they did was create a terrible environment that doesn't foster self actualization.)
AkshayChin@reddit
Hey man, there are better people out there to refute your points, but these are clearly not libertarian principles. Doesn't matter if you were a "registered libertarian" since 2000's. The views you hold can't even be considered as part of classical liberalism, forget libertarianism.
Just accept the fact that you don't hold libertarian principles and refute the points given. Don't say your "libertarian" if you clearly don't believe its principles are "right".
oboshoe@reddit
"hello fellow kids"
ochreundertones@reddit
This guy gets reality
matchavernus@reddit
youre clearly not a libertarian, please stop saying that
oboshoe@reddit
whoever posted this is simply stating a preference for 2nd order solutions with a wide benefit over 1st order solutions with a narrow benefit.
and it didn't have anything to do with your pet concern.
Routine_Medicine5882@reddit
Hey guys. I think we should let this commie tell us what belongs in a Libertarian subreddit.
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
😂
Anen-o-me@reddit (OP)
You don't solve wealth inequality through State coercive wraith transfers. That is inherently unethical.
Wrong. I believe in actual compassion. Not theft as compassion.
vegancaptain@reddit
That's exactly right, and each step they pretend like it's the most insane question they've ever heard.
persona-3-4-5@reddit
Even if they used all the money from billionaires in the US it would only last them a few months, right? There isn't any limit to how much they spend