What follows below is an excerpt from Wikipedia. It's pointing out something I find highly disturbing about politics in the US right now, alongside recent measures being taken by the government as well, such as the NSA data-collection and monitoring programs, the NDAA budget-passing that allows the President to use military personnel to detain any American citizen indefinitely without any hope of due process, and drone "patrols" in US airspace.
If that does not give it away, this is NOT advocating support for the government blindly. It's not a secret that I have socialist and progressive leanings but I also follow some libertarian ideologies myself. I want the government to not interfere with my private life if I am not hurting anyone and if I am within the realms of the constitution. I don't want the government doing shit supposedly in the name of keeping me safe when all it's doing is shitting all over my privacy and my right to freedom of speech. I am a libertarian in that I want the fucking constitution to be upheld; I want my damn liberties! But when you try to tell me that taxing the rich is just too fucking harsh and that it's unfair and whine whine whine taxes are bad boohoo, you can cry me a fucking river because I will curb-stomp your dumb ass with a lesson on history and civics that will leave you reeling, just look at the "The rich benefit from socialism" thread for a certain post I made if you want proof of that. If you want to sit and tell me that it's too much to ask a guy who makes $800 million a year to pay $600 million in taxes, when he's using all the PUBLICLY-FUNDED services that have enabled his success? EAT MY FUCKING DICK. He still has $200 million THAT YEAR to himself. What the fuck do you expect someone is going to do with $200 million that isn't completely fucking beyond what a single person should be allowed to be able to do? Those taxes are NOT ruining your quality of life, and given the extremes of wealth disparity in this nation and across the world, this is NOT a valid argument at all. You are essentially crying that people who are rich are not rich enough.
And if you're also stating in the same train of thought that it's wrong for the government to use tax dollars to provide services for people who are fucking broke as shit and can't find work and can't take care of themselves [and more often than not I can bet you some rich capitalist pigfucker, if not a plurality of them, is/are going to be responsible for that], while Joe Rich snorts a pound of cocaine off of a pop starlet's tits, buys out a company and fires 90% of its workforce or outright closes it down because it was BECOMING a threat, eats the meat of a fresh-clubbed baby seal on a table made of elephant ivory while sitting in a chair made of tiger-skin and stuffed with the fucking tears of a hundred million families torn apart by the selfish shitheaded decisions of a few rich privileged individuals like him?
Your moral compass is so fucking completely broken that I'll be surprised if you somehow manage to find your way to the bathroom.
For a bit of light reading into what such pure-strain libertarians are advocating for and what it's history is in the United States, and to give credence to what I am talking about, I am going to address certain points of it in bolding with brackets. Bolding and italicizing is just for things I want especially highlighted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy#United_States
OK, so...you start to see my issues with libertarianism a bit, right? The idea that we should keep government out of business is a bit hollow sounding when business does not keep out of government. The idea that the rich should not have to pay such exorbitant taxes also sounds pretty hollow when the rich have so much power that they can affect our daily lives via our politicians with something bordering on impunity. There is also the matter of all the public services they all use and owe for enabling their success to begin with but that's overkill for now.
I hear the argument that all services they used should be privatized, but seriously, do you really want to turn over basic, vital functions of crafting a society over to an entity whose only allegiance is to the money they can make? What kind of free-market competition are roads going to have, exactly? "Take this interstate and pay this rate, or take that interstate and pay that rate, but since you need them, neither are really going to be any different and will be maintained as little as can be reliably expected so as to maximize profit"? What about education? It's bad enough we have to pay private entities for health care when that should be publicly-funded, too, given that, you know, a debilitating disease that can kill you essentially means you HAVE to see the doctor. And, seriously, are you going to say that human life has a price tag? There's an arbitrary, market-decided price on saving someone from dying of a disease they didn't choose to get?
Let's see...how about police? ...do I REALLY need to state where this is a completely fucking awful idea? No. Let's move on. Fire department: Don't pay us? We don't keep your house from burning down!" Let's not think of the power grids or anything that might be damaged by this whole thing or the possible collateral. And what if you don't pay? What're they gonna do? Send debt collectors after you? They'd never fucking last a month! And in what possible way can the free market improve the fire department?!
The judicial system, mass transportation... Social security. Let's privatize that! Because we need ANOTHER fucking insurance card in our wallets. Oh and service rates, too, and premiums, and what's that? Pre-existing condition? You're bipolar, or schizo, or dysphoric, have anxiety, heart conditions, cancer? WELL SORRY BUT WE DON'T WANT YOU CUZ YOU MIGHT NEED US FOR THAT DISABILITY THING! So long, sucker! What possible improvements might this even give me? No? Nothing? FUCK THAT, next thing. Food stamps. ...Yeah, no.
I could go on but honestly every benefit and promise of "superior quality" via competition of the free market always is darkened by the looming specter of history and the realities of our world.
The further you go into libertarianism, the closer you try to bring more power to the rich and the more you want to drag us into a plutocracy. The moment you step outside the boundaries of personal libertarianism and you start going into the realms of the public world, you immediately become some kind of moron; further you go, the bigger you become.
If that does not give it away, this is NOT advocating support for the government blindly. It's not a secret that I have socialist and progressive leanings but I also follow some libertarian ideologies myself. I want the government to not interfere with my private life if I am not hurting anyone and if I am within the realms of the constitution. I don't want the government doing shit supposedly in the name of keeping me safe when all it's doing is shitting all over my privacy and my right to freedom of speech. I am a libertarian in that I want the fucking constitution to be upheld; I want my damn liberties! But when you try to tell me that taxing the rich is just too fucking harsh and that it's unfair and whine whine whine taxes are bad boohoo, you can cry me a fucking river because I will curb-stomp your dumb ass with a lesson on history and civics that will leave you reeling, just look at the "The rich benefit from socialism" thread for a certain post I made if you want proof of that. If you want to sit and tell me that it's too much to ask a guy who makes $800 million a year to pay $600 million in taxes, when he's using all the PUBLICLY-FUNDED services that have enabled his success? EAT MY FUCKING DICK. He still has $200 million THAT YEAR to himself. What the fuck do you expect someone is going to do with $200 million that isn't completely fucking beyond what a single person should be allowed to be able to do? Those taxes are NOT ruining your quality of life, and given the extremes of wealth disparity in this nation and across the world, this is NOT a valid argument at all. You are essentially crying that people who are rich are not rich enough.
And if you're also stating in the same train of thought that it's wrong for the government to use tax dollars to provide services for people who are fucking broke as shit and can't find work and can't take care of themselves [and more often than not I can bet you some rich capitalist pigfucker, if not a plurality of them, is/are going to be responsible for that], while Joe Rich snorts a pound of cocaine off of a pop starlet's tits, buys out a company and fires 90% of its workforce or outright closes it down because it was BECOMING a threat, eats the meat of a fresh-clubbed baby seal on a table made of elephant ivory while sitting in a chair made of tiger-skin and stuffed with the fucking tears of a hundred million families torn apart by the selfish shitheaded decisions of a few rich privileged individuals like him?
Your moral compass is so fucking completely broken that I'll be surprised if you somehow manage to find your way to the bathroom.
For a bit of light reading into what such pure-strain libertarians are advocating for and what it's history is in the United States, and to give credence to what I am talking about, I am going to address certain points of it in bolding with brackets. Bolding and italicizing is just for things I want especially highlighted.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plutocracy#United_States
Quote:Some contemporary and modern historians, politicians and economists believe the United States was effectively plutocratic for at least part of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era periods between the end of the Civil War until the beginning of the Great Depression. After the Civil War, with large industries reaching monopolistic or near-monopolistic levels of market concentration and financial capital increasingly integrating corporations, a handful of very wealthy heads of large corporations began to exert increasing influence over industry, public opinion and politics. Money, according to contemporary progressive and journalist Walter Weyl, was "the mortar of this edifice", with ideological differences among politicians fading and the political realm becoming "a mere branch in a still larger, integrated business. The state, which through the party formally sold favors to the large corporations, became one of their departments." [Does this sound familiar? It should. It sounds like how our own society is becoming. History is doomed to be repeated by those who do not learn from it and its mistakes...]
In his book The Conscience of a Liberal, in a section entitled The Politics of Plutocracy, economist Paul Krugman says plutocracy took hold because of three factors: at that time, the poorest quarter of American residents (African-Americans and non-naturalized immigrants) were ineligible to vote, [Not-so-subtle voter suppression laws being introduced by politicians who receive huge campaign contributions from corporations like Koch Industries comes to mind, here...] the wealthy funded the campaigns of politicians they preferred, [Another staple of our political process these days] and vote buying was "feasible, easy and widespread", as were other forms of electoral fraud such as ballot-box stuffing and intimidation of the other party's voters.
In modern times, the term is sometimes used pejoratively to refer to societies rooted in state-corporate capitalism or which prioritize the accumulation of wealth over other interests. According to Kevin Phillips, author and political strategist to U.S. President Richard Nixon, the United States is a plutocracy in which there is a "fusion of money and government." [And yet Citizens United passed, allowing for anyone to spend as much money as they would like supporting or lambasting an elected official or political candidate...it's not like Koch would go "We're gonna make you an offer you can't refuse. Here, we'll fund a $25 million smear campaign against your opponent, and you just...pay it forward. We'll come around later, and eh...work something out, eh?"] A similar position was taken by the Fourth International in January 1941, which stated "Roosevelt’s administration, which claims to be democratic, is really the representative of these piratic plutocrats" and that "the twin capitalist parties control all the main avenues for reaching the masses (the press, radio, halls, etcetera... they collect millions from their wealthy masters and spend them to bamboozle the public and buy elections". [In this I do not agree, given that FDR saving the entire US economy and lifting it from the dark depths of the Great Depression was probably more likely why he got elected.]
The U.S. instituted progressive taxation in 1913, but according to Shamus Khan, in the 1970s, elites used their increasing political power to lower their taxes, and today successfully employ what political scientist Jeffrey Winters calls “the income defense industry” to greatly reduce their taxes. [I defy anyone to show me any evidence they've done anything BUT exactly that.]
OK, so...you start to see my issues with libertarianism a bit, right? The idea that we should keep government out of business is a bit hollow sounding when business does not keep out of government. The idea that the rich should not have to pay such exorbitant taxes also sounds pretty hollow when the rich have so much power that they can affect our daily lives via our politicians with something bordering on impunity. There is also the matter of all the public services they all use and owe for enabling their success to begin with but that's overkill for now.
I hear the argument that all services they used should be privatized, but seriously, do you really want to turn over basic, vital functions of crafting a society over to an entity whose only allegiance is to the money they can make? What kind of free-market competition are roads going to have, exactly? "Take this interstate and pay this rate, or take that interstate and pay that rate, but since you need them, neither are really going to be any different and will be maintained as little as can be reliably expected so as to maximize profit"? What about education? It's bad enough we have to pay private entities for health care when that should be publicly-funded, too, given that, you know, a debilitating disease that can kill you essentially means you HAVE to see the doctor. And, seriously, are you going to say that human life has a price tag? There's an arbitrary, market-decided price on saving someone from dying of a disease they didn't choose to get?
Let's see...how about police? ...do I REALLY need to state where this is a completely fucking awful idea? No. Let's move on. Fire department: Don't pay us? We don't keep your house from burning down!" Let's not think of the power grids or anything that might be damaged by this whole thing or the possible collateral. And what if you don't pay? What're they gonna do? Send debt collectors after you? They'd never fucking last a month! And in what possible way can the free market improve the fire department?!
The judicial system, mass transportation... Social security. Let's privatize that! Because we need ANOTHER fucking insurance card in our wallets. Oh and service rates, too, and premiums, and what's that? Pre-existing condition? You're bipolar, or schizo, or dysphoric, have anxiety, heart conditions, cancer? WELL SORRY BUT WE DON'T WANT YOU CUZ YOU MIGHT NEED US FOR THAT DISABILITY THING! So long, sucker! What possible improvements might this even give me? No? Nothing? FUCK THAT, next thing. Food stamps. ...Yeah, no.
I could go on but honestly every benefit and promise of "superior quality" via competition of the free market always is darkened by the looming specter of history and the realities of our world.
The further you go into libertarianism, the closer you try to bring more power to the rich and the more you want to drag us into a plutocracy. The moment you step outside the boundaries of personal libertarianism and you start going into the realms of the public world, you immediately become some kind of moron; further you go, the bigger you become.
