Freedom is not safe

Hippies love Freedom.







Even the Pepsi People were Feelin' Free, before Susan Shirley bought the world a Coke.

 

Strong feelings will not solve our country's problems. Unless those strong feelings are caring and compassion for others.

 

The largest study of libertarisn attitudes ever conducted was the 2012 survey by Iyer

I'm sure you read the New York Times regularly and watch the news on CNN and MSNBC. For you to lecture anybody about tribalism is richly ironic. But I'm impressed that you can spell cognitive dissonance.

 

Please don't confuse hippies with libertarians. Hippies loved freedom, but not their personal freedom at the expense of everything else.

 

Truth. Let's let everyone be who they want to be.

 

The largest study done on libertarians compared the attitudes of 12 thousand of them with those of even larger samples of liberals and conservatives. Understanding Libertarian Morality: The Psychological Dispositions of Self-Identified Libertarians The libertarians stood out from the others in having significantly less empathy toward fellow humans, less sociability, and an emphasis on individualism over altruism and patriotism. They differ from conservatives in placing a low value on loyalty and sanctity, and from liberals in downgrading the values of car and fairness.fairness These seem to be people out for themselves. No society can endure that way, and no humans can survive for very long without society.

 

There are several sub-categories of libertarians: the objectivists, followers of Ayn Rand, who preach the virtues of selfishness; the anarcho-capitalists, who think business corporations should run the country; the minarchists, who want a variety of small private groups to run it; the fiscal libertarians, who favor a limited role for government along the lines of laissez faire; the neo-libertairians who favor fiscal conservatism on domestic spending, but favor defense spending and military intervention around the world; the paleo-libertarians who are isolationists and nativists; etc. While individualism and a concept of freedom emphasizing freedom from external restraint and government is the unifying bond, there are important differences among them. The paleo-libertarians, in particualr, seem to be part of the Trump political base.

 

That would be nice. It could be done now if billioniares who are sending themselves to the moon and Buying multiple mansions would just pitch in. Why don't they?

 

Cello

But many surveys have shown that the poorer in society actually give more to charity than the wealthier, while in many cases paying more in tax.

And more often than not the wealthy institutions, corporations and individuals are gaining more from public money than the rest of the population (from publicly funded infrastructure like roads or social institutions like education for example)

So the root causes of disadvantage are down to immigration and the drug war can you explain your think on this?

What would be your policy solutions to tackle the root causes of poverty?

 

How you continually resist "hello cello" I'll never know.

I don't need a survey for that one, man. I've seen it and lived it. The story about the widow's mite is how it was, is and forever will be.

I do appreciate the roads. Education is in the Dark Ages at the moment: four years in a public library will teach you more than four years at any university in the States.

These are the two that I have chosen to focus on. I am open to other ideas, but these strike me as the low hanging fruit.

Immigration: locally, we are a self-proclaimed "sanctuary" that actively works to attract immigrants from Mexico and Guatemala. The immigrants are great folks, but arrive with absolutely nothing. In my experience over the last decade, they are 90+% undocumented and have no education, trade, property, etc. They have a tremendous work ethic. This is similar to other parts of the country that I have lived in, although the countries of origin have been different in those other areas.
These undocumented workers are highly valued by local employers because they work very hard and are subjected to every type of exploitation imaginable by every kind of exploiter you would expect: domestic servants kept as unpaid slave labor, unskilled laborers paid less than minimum wage in cash, workers forced to work packaging illegal narcotics to pay off debts incurred to covert immigration providers, sexual slavery, etc. They are willing to endure this because even this is usually preferable to conditions back home. As one elderly Guatemalan woman explained to me, she worked three jobs, seven days a week, without a break and only saw her tiny apartment when it was time for her to sleep. However, she had a little money saved, she had an old car, and she was able to sent a little money home to relatives. In Guatemala, she said, she would have worked equally as hard and had nothing at all. Exploited immigrants like these make up almost 100% of the impoverished Latino community in my locality.
In addition, the presence of a large labor pool of workers available for exploitation has depressed the demand for local unskilled laborers who would demand legal rates of pay and treatment, thereby keeping those workers in a state of poverty as well.
The current state, which has been going on for decades, is truly awful. Who benefits? Locally, it is agriculture, small manufacturers, construction, criminal cartels and the politicians who are supported by these interests. Also there are the usual businesses that prey on the poor and disadvantaged: trailer park owners, pawn shops, pay day loan operations, convenience stores (which now commonly sell scales, pipes and blunts in addition to the budget alcohol, generic cigarettes, caffeine pills, junk food and lottery tickets).
The solution is simple: reform immigration laws (opposed by Republicans) and enforce those laws (opposed by Democrats). Part of this would also involve enforcing the labor laws that are already on the books, but have been disregarded (opposed by both parties). Free the people from their exploitation.

Mass incarceration: the high rates of incarceration for essentially victimless crimes (i.e. drug possession) have kept many men (at a local level, African Americans have suffered disproportionally) from being able to provide incomes to their families. This has perpetuated a cycle of poverty.
The current state: so many African Americans have been imprisoned for drug offenses that it has no longer become a source of shame. Prison time has completely failed as a deterrent. Many families have been broken up and kept in a state of poverty for generations. Other crimes (murder, assault, burglary, theft, prostitution) have also grown as a result. Once convicted, it becomes more difficult to find any gainful employment, especially the kind of job that provides medical benefits.
The solution is simple: end the drug war. Send the fathers home to help provide for their families, raise their children and uplift their communities. Let my people go.

 

Doubtful. Four years in the public library reading on your own presents the same problems as narrowcasting on cable news. Education isn't done by choosing the facts and viewpoints that you expose yourself to. And after four years in the library, what credentialing do you have for a decent job? Four years at a university in the States should at least teach you not to make sweeping assertions like this without evidentiary backup. Did you attend and graduate--college, that is?

 

Ordinarily, immigration reform and enforcing the labor laws would require big time government action to make people (specifically, those exploitative employers you mention) do things they don't want to do. How libertarian is that?

 

In my college experience, I wanted to focus on classes directly tied to my major (forestry) and as it turns out, the rigorous liberal arts requirements at the University of Minnesota turned out far more important than I could have imagined at the time. The literature for the various classes was important; so too were the instructors and interaction with other students. Had I spent my time alone in the library, I would have had an experience that would have taught only anti social behavior and purged empathy.

 

Cello

So you are in favour of taxation especially for the higher wealth brackets?

But that is the point it doesn’t have to be, why are you claiming it ‘has to be’ when it doesn’t?

But why is ‘education is in the Dark Ages’ in education you basically get out of it what you put into it, if it is well watered it usually bares fruit, give it little water and it withers – as to public libraries right wing governments in the UK have been basically trying to close them as one comic put it "Austerity is the idea that the 2008 financial crash was caused by Wolverhampton having too many libraries.".

Thing is that I’ve had many people that have called themselves libertarians that wanted to close tax funded public libraries as ‘we have the web now’.

And as someone said undirected and unsupervised learning can often be more dangerous than no learning.[/quote]

 

Cello

Sorry what laws?

What laws are been opposed by Republicans and what laws are been opposed by Democrats

Do you favour allowing migrants in legally and giving working migrants legal status?

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If such people had a legal status and could seek legal redress then it would go a long way to curtailing such exploitation.

If they were on a par with other workers especially if unionised

I’m all against exploitation but to counter it you need laws and regulations – the thing is that I’ve talked to many people that call themselves libertarians who oppose such laws.

 

Cello

You talk of Guatemala but the thing is do you know of the US involvement in Guatemala and the legacy it has even up to today?

The devastating effects of American intervention in Guatemala

Many of those fleeing to the US are doing so because of the desperate social and economic circumstances in their countries that are due to historical US involvement

Fleeing a hell the US helped create: why Central Americans journey north

As many experts have pointed out if the US doesn’t want so many Guatemala migrants it would be putting in the effort to make Guatemala a better place to live in.

 

Cello

But send them home to what?

You must realise that that goes beyond the war on drugs, so why do you think that happens? Why do you think African Americans have had traditionally some of the lowest incomes?

I mean great you end the war on drugs but you realise that will not just make poverty disappear so I ask again what would be your policy solutions be to tackle the root causes of poverty?

 

That's how they fooled us when they passed the federal income tax - it was only supposed to tax the Rockefellers. I am not the income tax's biggest fan. Some taxation is necessary, but it should be as local and as 'voluntary' (i.e. sales tax vs. income tax) as practical.

It's human nature. If you value money more than I do, you will have more of it and give less of it away. I value the liberal arts far more than my employer does - he has money and I can enjoy Handel's Messiah - and he has never heard of either.

Education is in the Dark Ages for a number of factors. The primary issue is that these efforts are managed strictly at a very high level, with little flexibility for local conditions. The system is highly politicized with an atmosphere of intolerance. One of America's most famous teachers, Bolivian-born Jaime Escalante, was persecuted for political reasons and his successful Calculus department (depicted in the 1989 film Stand And Deliver) was destroyed. This is dramatic, but typical.

In the U.S., the Library of Congress was started by a donation of the personal library of wealthy slaveowner Thomas Jefferson and public libraries were started by wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie. We have a history of wealthy donors voluntarily paying for them. Local taxes are usually enough to maintain them. Curiously, it is more difficult where I live to obtain a library card than to cast a vote.

It wasn't me!

In the 90s I knew a poor kid from impoverished Appalachia who grew up reading Shakespeare for entertainment. He had all the plays just about memorized. His vocabulary was impressive. He was astonished at the ignorance he encountered at the university level.

I knew another American kid in the 80s who grew up in West Germany without any friends. She could not understand German and did not enjoy German TV. Her only entertainment was a set of Encyclopedia Britannica. She read the first half of the set before returning to the States and found American high school and college unchallenging.

 

Things like e-verify have been very poorly enforced. Even than, undocumented workers are able to get around the system by using someone else's documentation. Everyone I know has had their identity stolen at least once (twice for me!) but nothing is ever done. Nothing! A Latino friend of mine was ruined when it was found that eight other people were using his identity - he had to obtain a new social security number and it took years to sort it all out.

I have personally helped undocumented immigrants to get sponsored by an employer to get the right documents to work here. The difference between documented and undocumented is profound; it impacts their entire lifestyle, happiness, etc. Pretending that we do not have tens of millions of undocumented immigrants hurts everyone.

 

If you get the African American men out of the criminal justice system and do not force them to compete unfairly with cheap exploited undocumented workers, you will have tackled the two biggest things keeping African American families in poverty.

What you do then is find the next two candlesticks and attack those.