in which brute says things about libertarianism

[Riggerjack]

I actually rarely compromise very much in that way. Some seriously sexy man-candy in my line-up.

And you don't see any contradiction there?

[Riggerjack]

I'm not asking you to compromise on your standards. You want man candy. Awesome. I love it when people know what they want. Do not compromise here.

But if you look at your line up, you will see other areas of each, that you are willing to compromise on. This is where I suggest looking for a better fit. The areas you are already compromising. Too much cologne. Too young. Too grouchy, whatever.

And I'm not saying to change they poly action, you seem to like it.

I'm saying, when you compromise, do it in ways more attuned to your long term interests, as you define them.

I think that makes sense?

[Riggerjack]

Thead, completely jacked. Sorry BRUTE. I do like tangents.

[7Wannabe5]

Lawrence: “The root of all evil is that we all want this spiritual gratification, this flow, this apparent heightening of life, this knowledge, this valley of many-coloured grass, even grass and light prismatically decomposed, giving ecstasy. We want all this without resistance. We want it continually. And this is the root of all evil in us.”

Luckily, I am not one of those who loves to stare into the abyss, so unaware creates the abyss, like Lawrence or failed art student Hitler. Even when I experimented with S&M, I was compelled to try and make my Dom break role and laugh during a scene, and I got bored with all the piquant epicurean drama. Kind of like the Bill Murray character in "What About Bob" vs. the Richard Dreyfus character. Actually, I even kind of look like a female version of Bill Murray in "What About Bob." (sigh.)

And you don't see any contradiction there?

Touche. Will have to ponder. I think what I meant is that I do compromise in conventional terms of relationship, but that is a conscious choice, and a bit of a win-win for me at this juncture. If I was younger and in need of a nest-partner, then I would choose differently. I don't know any females who were made happier by late life marriage. It's just like they were stuck in a rut of doing something that no longer makes sense.

Has anybody else noticed how post-modern this thread is becoming?

[Campitor]

Marxist-socialism = what older Americans think of when they hear the word socialism. This means a top-down hierarchical system in which the state owns the productive facilities and a party ("The Communist Party") decides how they're used.

Democratic-socialism = there are some on the US-left who advocate this. Not many countries have a working model of this although several South American ones pretend to. Again, the state would own all productive facilities (if not, they'd nationalize and take them over) but the people would decide how they're used by a democratic process. This is also called Corbynism.

Social democracy = in which productive means stay in private hands and the capitalist economy remains a foundation. The democracy part comes in when laws are made to regulate the economy to achieve the ends of socialism (the class struggle thing) via peaceful(*) (i.e. voting) means. To rephrase, the idea is to achieve socialism by democratic means such as making laws that regulate the capitalist enterprises. The government does not control the productive means directly, but it does control a percentage of the profits by taking it as taxes.

I fear those espousing Social Democracy today, within the United States, are actually espousing Democratic Socialism. Once these Democratic socialist policies are put into place, they will creep into other avenues of governance that isn't expected. It's then a short leap to Marxist-socialism. I do understand that some social policies are good for the Republic. The majority of citizens regardless of party affiliation don't want to see senior citizens starving or orphans wandering the streets. Paved roads and other public infrastructure is great too.

But when you see many in government, left or right, advocating for policies that affect individual freedom: how and where you can protect yourself, surveillance of all our electronic activity, free speech, declaring citizens enemy combatants without a trial for the purpose of killing them, etc., I think we are sowing the seeds of future despotism. Humans are imperfect and therefore any power they wield should be temporary and very limited in scope. If the US went full blown Marxist , which would morph into Fascism imho, what terrible things would it do to its citizens and to the world?

And even if socialist have the best of intentions, it's not possible to do many of the things they want. Free university for everyone, guaranteed jobs for everyone, UBI, etc. Even if the money was there to do these things (I strongly believe they are not), they are still limits because of choice - not everyone will want to go into the occupations required for these social programs. Human capital would be the restricting factor unless we go Soviet style and force people into specific occupations. And why work when you can just get UBI and free healthcare?

I would rather err on the side of Libertarianism before entertaining anything beyond very limited and fiscally responsible social democratic programs.

[7Wannabe5]

But if you look at your line up, you will see other areas of each, that you are willing to compromise on. This is where I suggest looking for a better fit. The areas you are already compromising. Too much cologne. Too young. Too grouchy, whatever.

Too young was just a temporary aberration due to my BF knowing that I don't really go for them, and they are less likely to go bonkers for me, so less of a risk. But, likely you nailed it with the "too grouchy." Given a choice between (a)depressive, (b)repressed grouchy, or (c)overtly grouchy, I will choose overtly grouchy, but maybe I should try harder to find partner(s) who just aren't so grouchy, like me, or Bill Murray, or B.J. Hunnicutt. I find hotheads initially amusing, but then it eventually starts to seem like they are weak, because lacking control, and demanding of too much of my patience.

And why work when you can just get UBI and free healthcare?

In North Korea, the government even sponsored and provided sex workers. Of course, in that setting, the "why work" was easily answered by many by "so, I don't have to resort to eating the bark of the trees again."

[Campitor]

In North Korea, the government even sponsored and provided sex workers. Of course, in that setting, the "why work" was easily answered by many by "so, I don't have to resort to eating the bark of the trees again."

Agreed. Once the steady and incremental march of socialism takes its course, we will all be eating bark from trees regardless if we work or not while we lose all our freedoms and women become victims of state sponsored sexual abuse and coercion.

[7Wannabe5]

@Campitor:

I think this may depend on whether "socialism" is synonymous with "highly totalitarian and centralized government."

On somewhat related note, the problem with the division of right to "force" into the 10,000 or more units suggested as Libertarian ideal by BRUTE, is that it does eventually devolve into something like every male bear defending his territory. Which makes it more difficult to picture female version of Libertarian ideal, unless I resort to role model from TV show about the Vikings. I do have a 6'2" fully blonde-bearded son, but he has exhibited zero-percent willingness to go do battle for me against my arch-nemesis J. Bozo.

[jacob]

North Korea?! Strawman much Come on now ... it's mathematically impossible to pick a less representative example for pretty much anything.
NK is either DNF or at the bottom of every list that measures any kind of human development. If you want to compare, lets compare some numbers. It's sui generis in practically every category.

Social democracy was a intended to be a post-WWII middle ground between capitalism and communism (=marxist socialism). You'll find that social democracies rank the highest in the world in terms of

freedom: https://www.cato.org/human-freedom-index
democracy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy_Index
happiness: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Happiness_Report

Thus so far so good. But maybe eating bark is the next incremental step after medaling in those three disciplines ...

Feel free to find some other lists, e.g. teen pregnancy, incarceration rates, literacy, hate crime, gdp/capita, life expectancy, government debt/gdp,...

[Campitor]

I didn't bring up North Korea by the way - not sure who you're directing that strawman accusation at. NK is a totalitarian regime masking as socialist but so is every other major socialist country.

The Socialist agenda here in the US doesn't appear to be the socialism you're accustomed to in Europe - it appears to be modeled after the Chavez/Fidel model more than anything else; their philosophy states one thing but their actions and words point toward a more Marxist ideology.

[jacob]

As long as we're able to distinguish between the different kinds of *isms instead of lobbing them all under the same term. Confusing your socialists is as bad as confusing your liberals (which includes neoliberals and libertarians) or your capitalists (there's a difference between Chinese capitalism and US capitalism). The actions of the isms are quite different even if they sound the same. Establishing that nuance was the intent of my original [long] post.

[7Wannabe5]

I only brought up government sex workers in North Korea as an example of how far one could go in extrapolating provision of basic human needs. I did not intend to confound it with Finland.

OTOH, the city in which I spent most of my adult life is more like Finland than most of the U.S. and it's kind of very nice and very interesting and very boring at the same time. Kind of like Finnish music,maybe. Kind of like the interesting is somehow forced to stay within a certain range, almost analogous with the amount of diversity encouraged/tolerated in an affluent urban classroom setting.

I am also thinking about the novel "The Dinner" by Herman Koch, in which the narrators voice starts out all ironic and witty and easily recognizable as member of aspirational class anywhere on the planet, but currently living and dining at a very nice restaurant in Amsterdam, and then every thing devolves, as the narrator and his wife discover that their son was one of the barely recognizable youths video-taped kicking a homeless woman to death. The reversion to tribal functioning is almost immediate on the part of the mother, and passively acceded on the part of the narrator father.

[Mister Imperceptible]

@JLF

I do appreciate your long post and was aware of the fact that the same words are often used to describe different things, in this case with regards to -isms. But I must agree with Campitor that what today’s US “socialists” are aiming for is quite potentially dangerous, because of the interwoven identity politics. You usually see this because the SJWs are not just insisting on equality and fairness. They feel it is perfectly acceptable to say “White People are Evil” and consider it a moral imperative for white people to “be quiet and listen. Don’t listen with the intent to respond,” in other words “Shut up and do we say, I am right and you are wrong, the justification for this is the color of your skin.” You can see this in the Black Lives Matter movement, where they want to say the country itself is founded on racism and the Constitution needs to be torn up. Not all of them are saying that, but most of them are thinking it. They are biding their time. Many of them are already outspoken in that they did not want to just tear down the Confederate monuments....they wanted to tear down the monuments of the Founding Fathers. “I see you, socialists.”

This probably does not manifest itself as much in the “socialist” movements in other countries, where the populations tend to be more ethnically monolithic. The historical legacy of chattel slavery is synthesizing with Marxist/Leninist/anarchist elements.

[7Wannabe5]

My point wasn't that Level 3 functioning is preferable to Level 4 functioning, but rather that there is something about Level 4 functioning that is relatively weak, kind of like how 8 year old functioning is in some ways relatively weak compared to that of a rowdy 2 year old. Aaaaargh...might be the case that I am half agreeing with Jordan Peterson.

[Mister Imperceptible]

Also, beyond what ramifications there are for personal liberty, what about the actual economic consequences? How much of Europe’s growth is being stifled by its tax rate and wealth re-distribution policies? Can the “economist” really save the economy....or is it up to the entrepreneur? Scandinavia sounds like a great place to go to eat cured meats and artisanal cheeses and chase blondes and become part of a happiness index statistic, but I would rather start a business and try to make money in America. You’re probably more familiar than I with the Law of Jante...

[7Wannabe5]

the Law of Jante...

Kind of sounds like my ex. Probably kind of sounds like anyone's ex.

[Mister Imperceptible]

I hope I don’t sound like a typical obnoxious American. How much of success possible in America is attributable to a more pro-business environment, and how much is attributable to its large population and access to natural resources?

If it were entirely the latter, would not China already be ahead of the US? (Are they on their way to being ahead of US?)

[7Wannabe5]

It's very easy to start a business in the U.S., but very few people do it. So, I'm not sure the evidence for incentive exists? I would say that the climate actually isn't very supportive of micro-businesses as opposed to huge monopolies, because micro-businesses can't afford lawyers and accountants. For instance, there is no way I could have afforded to bring successful suit against J. Bozo when he withheld funds from me in violation of contract. I am even afraid to type his real name.

[jacob]

@MI - Certainly, see http://earlyretirementextreme.com/the-h ... earth.html ...

Also see,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_c ... our_worked (Norway leads because of oil)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_Int ... Indicators (look at per capita, that takes care of population)

It's easier to start a business in Denmark (one bureaucracy) than in the US (three bureaucracies: city, state, fed). I've done both.

[Campitor]

It's easier to start a business in Denmark (one bureaucracy) than in the US (three bureaucracies: city, state, fed). I've done both.

Evidence of the efficiency possible when government’s touch is lighter and judiciously applied.