Libertarian lies. My RW brother in law want's my thoughts ....

[MedicalAdmin]

I am already formulating a response to the many unbelievable factual errors but I thought some feedback and input from DU would be invaluable. I did a quick search and the guy who wrote this is was convicted for securities fraud - no surprise there.

Tell me what you think and please give me some ammo. My brother in law is not stupid (exactly) but he is unemployed and watches too much fox. I think there is hope but I need to send back a few salient refutations along with my holiday salutations.

Cheers everyone and thanks in advance for any input or comments I get. Here's the "thing" he sent me via email.





"The root of the problem the world is facing right now isn't really governments… or banks. The real problem is simply a very bad idea – the idea that the State ought to sit in the center of society. Let me explain…


The last 100 years (since 1914) saw not only the end of the classic gold standard, but also the fantastic ascendancy of the nation-state.

These two trends are inherently and dangerously related.

Until World War I, the central government of the United States, for example, played a small role in the lives of its citizens. Its powers were strictly limited, as were its revenues. It was specifically barred from taxing citizens directly. It was a humble government that interacted with the individual states in the union, but didn't interact much with individual citizens.

The first signs of change came after the Civil War. "Progressive" ideas began to emerge. Most of these ideas came from Germany, from philosophers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The core of these ideas was that the State itself was superior to its citizens. Therefore, the argument went, society ought to be organized to better accomplish the goals of the State.

Today, most Americans have no idea that the foundations of our modern State are based – nearly verbatim – on the demands of Karl Marx's Communist Manifesto.

In 1848, Marx threatened to organize a worker's revolution unless European governments:

1. Abolished property rights and applied all rents towards public purposes.



2. Levied a heavy, progressive income tax to equalize wages.



3. Abolished all rights of inheritance.



4. Confiscated the property of all emigrants.



5. Centralized access to credit in the hands of the State by means of a national bank and an exclusive monopoly.



6. Centralized the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.



7. Provided free education for all children in public schools.



8. Produced a common agricultural policy to maximize the productivity of the land.



Most people in democracies like these ideas for one simple reason: They hold the allure of getting something for nothing. They are the siren song of living at the expense of your neighbor.

These ideas became extremely popular over the last 100 years, all around the world. As a result, as democracy spread, so did these ideas. Politicians of each party and persuasion throughout the Western world quickly adopted them as their own (and never mentioned Marx).

As these ideas took hold, one big problem developed… How do you pay for them?

Progressive politicians believed they had the answer. They just took Marx's big innovation: A progressive income tax. Let the rich pay!

It's a popular idea – but it never works because decisions to add more benefits don't take into account the expense of paying for them. It doesn't take long for the budget to get out of control. Or said another way, everyone can't live at the expensive of his neighbor. His neighbor can't afford it… and he moves.

More serious, the flaw in communism is obvious. Communism doesn't account for the fact that people expect to control the fruits of their labor. People don't like their assets being stolen and their wages being heavily taxed by a government that regulates their businesses and sends their children off to war. Incrementally, people stop working. Wealthy people flee… or hide their incomes.

Tax revenues fail to meet projections. Deficits grow. Deficit spending soars. And debts mount.

That's where paper money comes in. Paper money isn't only good for financing a war. It's also perfect for closing the gap between what an economy ought to produce and its paltry real production when it has been beaten into submission by communist ideas. I like to explain it this way…

The central truth of economics is scarcity. There can never be enough of anything to satisfy everyone. The central truth of politics is patronage: promising to give everything to everyone. Paper money is the bridge between economics and politic s.

The unpaid debts of an entire generation of people in Western countries are coming due. The so-called "baby boomers" grew up in a world dominated by Marxism and Keynesian economics. These are bad ideas. They are destined to collapse.

And the collapse is here.

Regards,

Porter Stansberry"

[HopeHoops]

1. The response is very simple. Get him THIS for Christmas ($4.95)

http://www.amazon.com/Declaration-Independence-Constitution-United-America/dp/1882577981/ref=pd_sim_b_8
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51U3HSoSLEL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

If he's at least semi-literate, you could also throw in ($7.95):
http://www.amazon.com/Federalist-Papers-Signet-Classics/dp/0451528816/ref=pd_sim_b_3
http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/41YuQa2GzPL._BO2,204,203,200_PIsitb-sticker-arrow-click,TopRight,35,-76_AA300_SH20_OU01_.jpg

[LuvNewcastle]

2. Wow, America has been Marxist for all

these years, we just didn't know it. These pseudo-histories peddled by the teabaggers are always being blown about with hopes that they will settle on fertile ground somewhere and take root. This is probably another parable from the lips of Rush Limbaugh, or one of the half-mad hyenas who serves as one of the 'academics' of their movement. If we could stop levying taxes and become our true greedy, social Darwinist selves, America could be a paradise.

[Blue_Tires]

32. that was my thought as well

all this time we've been living in a Marxist paradise? Who knew??

[Demeter]

3. Remind Him that This Is SUPPOSED to Be a Government of, by and for the People

Not the banksters, not the politicians and their lobbyists, not the Corporations, who all together have conspired to build that Monolithic State that your BIL rants about.

Marx has nothing to do with it, other than that Communism scared the S---out of the conspirators and made them clamp down even harder at every opportunity and pull out the Goebbels Big Lie Theory and buy up the media.

Ask him what he thinks about Hitler and Mussolini.

And as for the Economic Collapse--his facts are mostly fine, it is his conclusions that lack a basis. See the Stock Market Watch...

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4666696

and tell him that even gold has been corrupted by the self-appointed Elite. There's too much gold on paper, and that bubble will burst soon...

[MedicalAdmin]

16. Thanks. I've worked that into my email. Good stuff.

[ChoppinBroccoli]

4. Wow. The Person Who Wrote This Knows Almost ZERO About American History

I wouldn't even know where to begin in order to formulate a response. You'd have to take the author all the way back to the 1700s and then walk him/her forward. The Articles of Confederation. The Constitution. The Louisiana Purchase. Marbury v. Madison. There's just way too much education that this person is missing, which is probably why he/she writes and believes ill-informed but "official-sounding" e-mails like this one. Ignorance dressed up in flowery language always attracts ignorant people impressed by flowery language. My mind is on overload with all the factual errors. Too much idiocy to refute. Must sleep now.

[MedicalAdmin]

15. That was my reaction too.

I needed help. That forward is such a steaming pile of crap that I didn't have a big enough shovel. Let me know if you come up with something. Beyond the obvious logical errors, there are factual lies, historical innacuracies ...

Where does one start?

[Xicano]

5. One thing that can be pointed out.

[MedicalAdmin]

17. Yes - swish. Slamdunk!

Thanks.

[kctim]

6. Doesn't seem like anybody can help you

I am curious about what "unbelievable factual errors" you found and are going to respond to, though.

[MedicalAdmin]

18. I was thinking about the disconnect between the economic and political theories.

One does not necessarily connect with the other. There is no basis in fact regarding this connection as states in that email forward.

[Ikonoklast]

29. Another weak attempt. Try harder.

And read up on some American History.


Reading = Good.

[Lithos]

7. A couple of points

The flaw in this is the assumption that it is a communist/capitalist either/or condition. The issue is one of economics, not politics.

First, this is really a debate between the Austrian School of Economics and that of Keynes. But rather than address the complete failure of the Austrian model, the person is trying to equate Keynesian economics with Communism which is ludicrous. The emotional link point is that they feel that Government intervention in money supplies is the same as Communism.

For the record, the Austrian School of Economics is the very same system which lead the world into the Great Depression and kept it there until the application of Keynesian theory. In addition to wistfulness about the completely obsolete Gold Standard, the Austrian School of Economics also is the home of those who argue the merits of slavery as a good and viable economic model and support the notion of the return of indentured servitude. I can tell from the author that their critique of education is a heartbeat away from such a notion despite the fact that education has fueled the rise of numerous economies the world over.

As for some of the other points, first to Progressive taxation - this is an old idea based on the footprint one uses on the economy. Mr. Capitalism, Adam Smith, said in _The Wealth of Nations_:

"The necessaries of life occasion the great expense of the poor. They find it difficult to get food, and the greater part of their little revenue is spent in getting it. The luxuries and vanities of life occasion the principal expense of the rich, and a magnificent house embellishes and sets off to the best advantage all the other luxuries and vanities which they possess. A tax upon house-rents, therefore, would in general fall heaviest upon the rich; and in this sort of inequality there would not, perhaps, be anything very unreasonable. It is not very unreasonable that the rich should contribute to the public expense, not only in proportion to their revenue, but something more than in that proportion."

Also, the idea against paper money is ludicrous. The problem is that there is a finite amount of gold/silver and a limited ability to increase it. Frankly, there is not enough gold and silver at this time to support the weight of the existing economy. Also, given supplies are limited and the growth is limited, if the economy grows faster than the rate of increaes (mining/mintage), then money itself becomes devalued as it has to support an increase in movement (remember economics is about the movement of money and other valued items. If you have nothing to move, then your economy is non-existent. For someone who is so worried about detrimental affects of paper money, having such a fixed supply actually causes much greater economic problems. In fact, one of the major causes of the Great Depression was the Gold Standard.

Just a few points.

[MedicalAdmin]

19. Sweet jeebus. It's the motherload.

I was playing with an idea like what you wrote but you say it so much better. Mind if I borrow use hour words - referenced of course?

[musette_sf]

23. + 1K

Proving once again that my standard response to libertarian d-bags who spout this junk is still correct:

"Your premise is, at best, specious."

[MicaelS]

8. The lack of the Gold Standard is one of the favorite

RW / Libertarian memes. How terrible it is. Here's how to torpedo that meme.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold

At the end of 2009, it was estimated that all the gold ever mined totaled 165,000 tonnes. This can be represented by a cube with an edge length of about 20.28 meters. The value of this is very limited; at $1200 per ounce, 165,000 tons of gold would have a value of only 6.6 trillion dollars.

So if all currency in the world was based on gold, either one of two things would happen. The money supply worldwide would severely contract, or the price of gold would skyrocket to possibly as high as $12,000 an ounce.

[izzybeans]

9. You can't argue with someone who believes in myths.

You just can't.

They can call anything communism or Marxism and believe it was thus.

Whoever wrote this never read Marx or the Manifesto and doesn't know what communism or democracy is. I doubt very highly they understand the meaning of the word liberty either.

Prices are impacted by scarcity, however value is created by labor. The nation-state developed alongside the complexity of the market. It grows in response to the failure of the market to efficiently allocate resources and police itself. A legitimate criticism of Marx would entail him not seeing how central the state would become to the economy and how it would function to save Capitalism from the fate he predicted - that and his inattention to the bureaucratic structure of work.

The state had to be utilized to end the exploitation that was driving our country into a chaotic state (a history that has been suppressed about our economy). Workers strikes were widespread and put down with violent force. Ever heard of the Pinkertons? Imagine Blackwater being deployed to your worksite to end a contract despite with bullets. Whole government units were created to stop mass poisonings through the food and medicine supply. Massive oversight apparatuses were created to ensure that private and public research entities were not exploiting their research subjects. All market failures. What you are reading in that email is a piece of "anti-history". It's fudged, fake, ajumble of artifacts decontextualized etc.

If Marx was correct in his predictions the nation-state would be non-existent (if not know than eventually). The economy would be run democratically and would thus truly police "itself" - given the economy is made up of a collection of individuals, those of us who believe in self-governance would democratize the workplace, flatten the bureaucratic hierarchies and turn strategic control over to the people who make and/or provide the goods and services that flow through the economic system.

Libertarians believe in authoritarian rule when it comes to economics, that fact is just hidden behind a childlike belief that Santa (e.g. scarcity) brings the presents. People bring the presents and they work in an authoritarian system controlled through giant bureaucracies in order to do so(at least the bulk of them). If your b-n-law truly believed in liberty, than he would believe in liberty for all and at all times, even at work. That means self-rule all day everyday, not just at the ballot box.

On edit: If this is the same Porter Stansbury, he was fined 1.5 million for disseminating fraudulent stock information http://www.sec.gov/litigation/complaints/comp18090.htm

...so his disinformation here seems pretty typical.

[MedicalAdmin]

21. Yah - I feel like I'm paddlin upstream when I talk to him.

He's unemployed but thinks tax cuts for the rich will get him a job. The disconnect is stunning.

Having said that, I wouldn't bother if not for his kids. They deserve at least a little sense in their lives and I'm here to provide it.

[ttwiddler]

10. cute

The collapse of the gold standard was a very good thing. Its simplest benefit was that it allowed the money supply to expand, credit to flow, and inflation to rise (moderately on average) without having to legislate it constantly.

The Karl Marx stuff is pure comedy. My comments:

1. No Western democracy has done this. The general trend of property law has been to make property easier to transfer and to favor those who would be productive with the land. Libertarians and wingnuts (tea party jokers and the rest of those infants who want the whole world but refuse to pay a dime for it) stubbornly cling to this belief that someone should be allowed to leave their property for decades, do nothing with it, and that everybody else should suck it up. Tough break guys, but that idea died a couple of hundred years ago.

2. Not in the US. The purpose of the progressive income tax here has a lot in common with Adam Smith's comment on toll roads. He didn't mind them as long as the owners of more expensive vehicles paid more than the owners of less expensive vehicles.

3. Ask him to point to the section of the US code that does this or even to to the section of a state code that does it. If he really thinks the last 400 years of changes to inheritance are so terrible, invite him to look up fee tail and primogeniture. Perhaps he'd prefer that system.

4. I'd like to see one instance of this in the absence of a connection with a crime.

5. This is stupid. Credit is not monopolized in the hands of the state. It's as decentralized as it gets. This is a misunderstanding of how the credit system works. I find this to be common among libertarians.

6. I'm sure the transport argument will be that Congress has coerced the states into making laws regarding transportation by means of the spending power. If that's the complaint, perhaps the libertarian can explain why the giver of the money should have no say in its spending. I've frequently found people on the right who complain about the federal govt "forcing" the states to do things without acknowledging (probably not even realizing) that the states could avoid this situation by not taking the money.

The communications thing is laughable. The only passable argument to be made is the federal govt's ownership of the airwaves. It was done as a last resort because competitors were busy trying to overpower each other (essentially jamming each other) instead of competing. Hell, it was done by a laissez faire Republican Congress because the then-current situation was both intolerable and inefficient.

7. Seriously, he's against basic education? I was going to mention how this idea first got popularized by Adam Smith, but that's probably not necessary. Who's against education?

8. Well, we had no agricultural policy and the farmers were living in medieval conditions in the 1920s. With an agricultural policy, we did so well that they ended up doing quite well. Given those choices, I'm not sure of his argument. Is it more principled to let people live as humans did for thousands of years, with no modern devices, or is it more principled to teach them how not to screw themselves through the market, create an REA to bring them electricity, teach them about fertilizers, teach them about crop rotation, help them acquire low-interest loans so that predatory lenders aren't making them homeless?

The common refrain about entitlements irritates me. It shows absolutely no knowledge of how "entitlements" existed prior to the New Deal. Perhaps your brother-in-law would care to learn about the sweetheart deals multiple Republican congresses gave the railroads throughout the 19th century. If those weren't "entitlements" I don't know what is.

The bit about paper money is typical far-right bullshit. Paper money is used because it's no different from gold, except in perception. While gold does have industrial uses today, it has no intrinsic value as a currency. Gold isn't worth anymore than people think it is. The same is true of paper money. Goldbugs will argue that it's easier to devalue a currency that's not based on specie and they're right. That point is also irrelevant. The goldbug's greatest dream is a stable currency. 1872-1892 is the period of the greatest currency stabilization in American history. That period is known as the Great Deflation.

I know I've been a bit of an incoherent windbag here, but one more thing before I go.

"The first signs of change came after the Civil War. "Progressive" ideas began to emerge. Most of these ideas came from Germany, from philosophers like Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The core of these ideas was that the State itself was superior to its citizens. Therefore, the argument went, society ought to be organized to better accomplish the goals of the State."

The above is bullshit. The idea that citizens, formerly known as subjects, exist to serve the state is as old as monarchy. The writer seems to think that the American ideal of government existing to serve the governed was simply a confirmation of the natural order. It was very much the opposite. In fact, the quoted section expresses a view that would have been alien to Marx and Engels. It was a Nazi view, not a communist one.

Yeah, this is long and probably confused. Sorry.

[Ilsa]

11. I like paying taxes for an educated populace. I'd rather live around

informed people and have educated people in service as nurses, doctors, engineers, etc. It makes for a better and safer life for us all. Remind him of that next time he visits his doctor or dentist: most likely those people were trained somewhere along the way using state funds and government regulations for standards and licensure.

I don't mind agricultural policy being coordinated. It ensures we get variety, not just the produce with the highest profit margin.

[Ramulux]

12. I am so sorry

These are the ramblings of one deranged extremely unintelligent person. Anyone who took American government and politics in high school knows everything he says here is bullshit and also very conspiratorial and not based in reality. I dont think there is much to debunk here, he doesn't really say anything that isn't obvious or just flat-out false. Also like all conservatives he does not understand what things were like in this country before world war 1 and why it is things changed so much afterwards.

[MedicalAdmin]

24. I would say his education is pretty lacking.

He went to a rural school and not one of the good ones. He has intelligence and is basically a decent guy, but this shit just drives me nuts. Maybe I'm bashing my head against a wall but he's family so I feel that I must make the attempt.

I love your point of what things used to be like. His family is rural and many of his grand parent aged relatives are still alive and would have been around at that time, although they might not remember it. He's very family oriented so linking his understanding to the history of his family might be just the hook I need to reel him in. Thanks.

[TBF]

13. Here we go again.

:popcorn:

[Puregonzo1188]

14. I would start by informing him that the Progressive Income tax was Adam Smith's idea.

A good deal before Marx took it up.



Perhaps than you could discuss Marx's views of the Nation State.


Or better yet--ask him to define a nation state--I'm not sure he knows what one is.

[mudplanet]

20. I don't know why you'd bother to argue with the jerk, but here goes:

Most people in democracies like these ideas for one simple reason: They hold the allure of getting something for nothing. - Ol' Porter's really the expert on human nature, as are most people who run con games. Because what he's pretending to know is nothing more that the classic aspect of all cons: deceive the victim into thinking that he is the one who is coming out on top. Unfortunately, it only works on dishonest people.

These ideas became extremely popular over the last 100 years, all around the world. As a result, as democracy spread, so did these ideas. That's for a good reason: most people aren't scam artists and scumbags, but recognize that these ideas have a lot of merit. And I'm getting a clear message that Porter doesn't think too much of democracy.

They just took Marx's big innovation: A progressive income tax. Let the rich pay! Or, more accurately, let the rich pay their fair share, or at least something. When people like Ross Perot pay no income tax because they've managed to have their paid for congressman design the tax code so that there are so many exemptions that a person who earns, literally, 100 million dollars a year pays less tax than a person who earns twenty-five thousand dollars a year, is it any wonder why the poor are angry. The rich benefit much more from all the benefits of American culture, government, and society. They get preferred treatment by the government, the courts, and law enforcement. They make scads of money using publicly owned resources such as the roads. Why the fuck shouldn't they pay more.

It's a popular idea – but it never works - Marymotherofgod has this asshole never read a history book? Between the 1930s and the 19600s the progressive income tax topped out at 90% and America enjoyed it's greatest economic growth rate in history, and had the greatest increase in living standards. Then ronnie raygun came along and living standards and life expectancy began to slip as the progressive income tax diminished. Conservatives like to talk about the laffer curve but there is not only zero historical evidence to support the theory, there is a wealth of evidence that shows it's 180 degrees wrong. It's called the laffer curve because it's a joke on America. They love it because it's how they'd like the world to work, and as they admit themselves, they're not reality-based. Income and living standards almost always decline when the progressive tax rate is decreased.

Communism doesn't account for the fact that people expect to control the fruits of their labor. This one quote illustrates most clearly that not only does Porter not understand Marxist theory, he hasn't even read it. Marx's theory of alienation is a cornerstone of all his later work.

Incrementally, people stop working. Wealthy people flee… or hide their incomes. Oh - whatabunchofbullshit. The country is already full of trust fund babies that haven't had to do a lick of serious work in their lives, and it hasn't had anything to do with alienation - it's because they aren't very motivated people and they had the good luck to have their parents die before they spent all their money. They aren't bad people, they aren't good people - they're irrelevant. Where the fuck are the "Wealthy people" going to flee to? And if they do, shouldn't we force them to leave their wealth behind? After all, they were able to accumulate it because they lived in our wonderful country. Now we're asking them to pay their fair share and their attitude is that they "earned it". I haven't met too many rich people who earned it. They are out there, but statistics show that the majority of millionaires inherited their wealth. Did Porter not read the paper when it turned out that the Swiss Banks were helping the rich hide their incomes already? Could "the rich hiding their money" have anything to do with Porter's predicted collapse of the system?

grew up in a world dominated by Marxism and Keynesian economics. These are bad ideas. They are destined to collapse. I take advice from Porter when he can demonstrate that he's actually read Marx and Keynes. I'm fairly sure if you asked him what policies he would have proposed he would tell you laissez-faire economics. And when you pointed out to him that that would have resulted in the United States becoming pretty much like a giant banana republic, in which the majority of people live in squalid poverty and the the wealthy have all the power, he'd ask you, "What's wrong with that?

What Porter means, in reality, is that these ideas threaten the privileges of the people in his economic class.

[MedicalAdmin]

25. Thanks.

Great points on Marx and marxism. I'll be sure to add them as an endnote.

Yah - I'm still picking apart the logical falacies. I haven't even started on the historical "facts."

Thanks again.



Ummmmm. I feel kind stupid asking this but I'm a Marx virgin/dumbshit. What do you mean about alienation being Marx's cornerstone? I've googled it but tons of stuff comes up. I've read a few but some are, as one might expect, somewhat contradictory. As someone who seems to understand the subject matter do you have any suggestions / links / Marx for dummies?

[Hannah Bell]

22. "Marx threatened to organize a worker's revolution unless European governments..."

= lol.

"Communism doesn't account for the fact that people expect to control the fruits of their labor." = lol.

in stansberry's eyes, "people" = capitalists, but apparently not workers.

[MedicalAdmin]

26. Thanks Hannah.

I was wondering if you know of a good book on Marx. I'm afraid it is a lacking in my knowledge base. Any suggestions on where to start to plug that hole?

[Hannah Bell]

28. how basic do you want? here's a light introduction disguised as comedy:

the mark steel lectures on marx:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByOKZmQ72m4

parts 2&3 on sidebar

[MedicalAdmin]

31. Thanks Hannah.

I love your postings on education. Spot on stuff.

I have the link in my "to watch ASAP" file.

[Ganja Ninja]

27. What is so hard to understand?

You can't fund the American government on the backs of the poor even when they are fully employed. They simply don't have the money. It's not a matter of can't pay. They don't have enough money even if you took it all. You have to get the money from the people that have the money. Why do right wingers have such a hard time grasping this simple concept? It's like expecting the fishing will be fine in a drainage ditch when the ocean is right across the street.

[Hannah Bell]

30. +100. bottom 20% get about 3-4% of the nation's income.