Libertarians are correct; government does not work.

[Deja Q]

Unfortunately, the fools readily forget that ANY institution - government or private - works only when you have competent, ethical, and moral people running it.

I'm sorry people think corporations are great. They think of the country even less than the government officials do. (if they did, they wouldn't offshore and piss on the working class as they do.)

[toddaa]

1. Libertarian socialists

You know, the real libertarians. Like the Zapatistas or the IWW folks. Those are libertarians. And they agree with you.

[Selatius]

12. I'm a follower of libertarian socialist thought

When the government fails, the people have to band together directly and do it themselves with their own heads and hands instead of relying on the corrupt bureaucrats thousands of miles away. It's a shame mutualism isn't a trait that is advocated as much in our society as opposed to fierce competition. If people were far more aware of socialist thought in the wake of Katrina, I would say we would have seen the victims at the dome taking matters into their own hands and getting those buses moving themselves or commandeering civilian boats left behind instead of relying on the fucking authorities who failed them and left them to die out there.

[Dagaz]

2. forget who said this

Republicans say that Governmant doesn't work..then set out to prove themselves right.

[Deja Q]

9. My parents think walmart is great because they're showing FEMA what to do.

:wow:

Yes, I know it's fun to bash government. But the corps need to be looked at too.

[bemildred]

3. Government can work fine. There are many good examples.

It is OUR government that blows chunks.

[Telly Savalas]

21. Precisely. When people don't give a shit about the government,

the government doesn't give a shit about them.

[JanMichael]

4. Wrong "government" can work. Nation States don't work.

Semantics...

[Qibing Zero]

5. Good call. nt

[VPStoltz]

6. Of course it does! Look how much wealthier The Chimp's friends got.

[calmblueocean]

7. I get what you're saying, but...

I've found it so incredibly agitating to hear people talk about the incompetence the Bush admin displayed during Katrina, and say, "See, that just proves it, you cain't rely on the government to help you."

It's not "government" or "the government" you can't rely on, it's "Bush's government". Or, put another way, you *can* rely on Bush's government... to be corrupt, incompetent, and unaccountable. Governments, like corporations, are only as good as the people running them.

[DrDebug]

8. Corrupt governments don't work

The superior ability of his early ministers and his early generals soon wearied him. He liked nobody in any way superior to him. Thus he chose his ministers, not for their knowledge, but for their ignorance; not for their capacity, but for their want of it. It was the same with his generals. He took credit to himself for instructing them; wished it to be thought that from the cabinet he commanded and directed all his armies."

Duke of Saint Simon about King Louis XIV

http://whatdoiknow.typepad.com/what_do_i_know/2005/09/george_ii_of_am.html

[Deja Q]

10. *applause* Ding ding ding, you are the winner.

Just like I told mum and dad after they were saying how walmart was doing a better job than FEMA. (altruism, image control, or both... and how gov't or corp is only as good as the people running them. Precisely.)

[kalibex]

23. 'Gov't' used to be a 'meritocracy'...

...in the way distant golden Past.

Well, that's the impression I get. That the small size of the governed units - ie, 'tribes' - allowed the members to easily monitor the competence of the leader(s). And that, if said leaders ultimately didn't deliver - they ended up... removed.

Are our current nation-states simply way too huge...?

[Liberal In Texas]

11. Sorry, libertarians are not correct. Government does work.

Next time you pull out of your driveway and don't have to pay a toll to exit your street, thank the government.

If you walk your dog in the park and don't have to pay an entrance fee, thank the government.

If your boss says, "Hey, clock out and clean the floors" and you say F off, thank not only the government that he can't do that, but unions as well.

The next time you're on a ship that has enough life boats for all the passengers and crew, thank the government.

When you send your kids to school on a yellow bus, thank the government.

Street lights, paved streets, sewer systems, you name it, all government.

WE are the government. If the corporations take over we'll be like the poor sods standing on the deck of the Titanic wondering how we're going to be saved.

Libertarians are nothing but Republicans that like to smoke pot.

Ignore them.

[nvliberal]

13. I wish we could ignore them, but

these cultists are in control of the Republican Party, and they are sending this country down the road to ruin.

[Selatius]

14. I hate to break the news, but the corporatists already took over

Not all libertarians are right leaning. If that were the case, there wouldn't be libertarian socialists like Noam Chomsky.

[nvliberal]

15. Face it, the only ones with any clout are those

of the radical right stripe.

Chomsky is virtually irrelevant in this political climate.

[Selatius]

16. That's irrelevent to the fact that libertarian socialism exists

Just because they are ignored does not mean they don't exist because they do. Clout should not be considered synonymous with the merits of an idea. If that were the case, then the teachings of Jesus or Gandhi or any great pioneer in human thought on things such as peace, love, justice, tolerance, compassion were useless from the very beginning because of the issue of clout. Nobody listened to them at first, and they were killed off not because their ideas held no merit but because they posed a direct challenge to those who profited off the existing order.

If anything, the actions of the current federal government will only serve to make the ideas behind libertarian socialism more favorable in the end. When the government isn't there to provide a helping hand to those who need help, then the people must band together and do it themselves as if the government doesn't exist, not sit around and wait. Otherwise, you die waiting for help that will either not arrive in time or not arrive at all.

If social security is destroyed, for instance, we're not simply going to allow the elderly to die out in the fucking streets of poverty. No, we're going to take in our grandparents, and we're going to pool our resources together to take care of each other.

[Liberal In Texas]

17. Well, polygamists exist too. I ignore them as well.

Mostly the people I talk to that describe themselves as libertarians, don't want to pay taxes. They want everything for free.

Boy, taxes just frosts them. That's why they fall for the illusion that the * crime family is on their side.

And do they get narked when they can't buy their pot! Damn government.

They are also the first people to apply for unemployment or free health services if they need it.

They're hypocrites.

[Selatius]

18. Well, they're not libertarian socialists, that's for sure

Nothing comes for free in this world. You cannot get something without giving up something else. Most people I've met who claimed to be libertarian weren't libertarian socialist either. The fact is socialism isn't popular in America because we've been raised on the propaganda that socialism is automatically evil. Natually, I wouldn't expect you to run across a libertarian socialist easily.

Few people, for instance, know about the countless libsocialist communes that sprang up all across the countryside in the chaos and power vacuum left behind during the Spanish Civil War. The factories and farms were abandoned by the owners, and the workers were left to fend for themselves. What did they do? They didn't wait around for the government to help them. They didn't wait for the money to appear. They would have all died of starvation if that were the case. They took the factories and farms over directly and administered them directly in the name of mutual wellbeing and survival of all involved. The result was a radically democratic way of life where resources were allotted according to need, not ability to pay. If it wasn't true democracy by classical definition, it came damn close to it.

[Liberal In Texas]

19. OK, am I to assume that you Selatius, are a libertarian socialist?

And I would think the emphasis would be on socialism.

Most socialist experiments in the last hundred years of so, pretty much failed. (If not all.)

I like the mix of capitalism with social control. Close regulation of the corporations, social health programs, social public works, etc.

And I find libertarians more like syberites than concerned about society. They just don't want to contribute. Oh, until it has to do with them.

[Kailassa]

20. Your "libertarian socialism" is their "compassionate conservatism"

Selatius:

"When the government isn't there to provide a helping hand to those who need help, then the people must band together and do it themselves as if the government doesn't exist, not sit around and wait. Otherwise, you die waiting for help that will either not arrive in time or not arrive at all.

If social security is destroyed, for instance, we're not simply going to allow the elderly to die out in the fucking streets of poverty. No, we're going to take in our grandparents, and we're going to pool our resources together to take care of each other."

Can someone explain to me the difference between this and and the Neocon "small government" agenda?

Selatius:

"If people were far more aware of socialist thought in the wake of Katrina, I would say we would have seen the victims at the dome taking matters into their own hands and getting those buses moving themselves or commandeering civilian boats left behind instead of relying on the fucking authorities who failed them and left them to die out there.

I find this incredibly insulting to the people in the dome. Again, what is the difference between this and the Neocon "blame-the-victim" attitude? Until the flooding happened, there was no great problem. After the flooding happened those buses were under water. And people were locked into that dome. I have no doubt that if they'd tried to fight their way out that waould have been used by Bushco as an excuse for a massacre. The government might seem inept at saving life, but killing they can manage with their eyes closed.

As for socialist principles, I wasn't there, but I do know we are discussing people who's basic attitude was to help each other and pull together. That is why the situation did not get worse than it was. Sure there were gangs making trouble, show me a part of America where that would not happen. At one stage in the dome when people were queuing for the rationed water, people were handing their babies to strangers who passed them up along the queue, to make sure they survived.

Never insult such a people by saying that having a different notion in their heads could have made everything alright.

[toddaa]

25. Capitalism is the problem

That, I believe, was Selatius' point. The poverty stricken people have been completely abandoned by our government on all levels. The answer isn't more capitalism, which requires an authoritarian top down heirarchical structure of government, but to give people control over their own lives.

[Selatius]

27. There are extreme differences between my ideology and neoconservatism

Can someone explain to me the difference between this and and the Neocon "small government" agenda?

Neocons simply want to take the government and give it to corporations, which is already happening. It's otherwise known as fascism, the merger of state and corporate power. Mussolini called it corporatism. Social programs are privatized (your "small government" remark), and ownership is held in the hands of the financial elite in the private sector so that they can make a profit.

Essentially, those programs are taken from a non-profit status to a for-profit one. As a result, the price individuals pay will rise as no owner of an enterprise would want to stay in business if he could not charge extra and keep the difference for himself. Making a profit requires control though, and property law, the foundation capitalism is built upon, will legitimize their control of such programs. It would now be considered owned by the corporation, not by the people.

Libertarian socialists would argue against putting such programs into the hands of a few in the disgusting name of "making a profit," and they would most definitely fight against and, if need be, die fighting fascism, and they have in the past just like everybody else who opposed fascism. They would argue it should be administered by the people collectively in their respective communities, and they would further argue for close cooperation between the several communities because the more people cooperate, the better the chances of survival and the lesser the workload placed on any one individual.

Again, what is the difference between this and the Neocon "blame-the-victim" attitude?

I don't blame the victim. The fact is the people put their faith in authorities who were either unwilling or unable to help them when they needed it the most. As a result, people died, over a thousand. That's fact. There is no equivocating over this issue. I lay the fault squarely at the doorstep of Bush and the rest of the goose-stepping jack-booted thugs now in control of government. They failed the people.

Blaming the victim would be saying it's their damn fault for being too poor and lazy and ignorant to get out. That's Bill O'Reilly. That's not me. What I'm saying is that if people, in general, weren't fed so much propaganda and rubbish from the corporate news media, then maybe, just maybe, we would all be less ignorant about our power to cooperate with each other. Instead, we're made to fear our fellow person. If resources in our society were allocated more consistently to need instead of ability to pay, maybe, just maybe, there wouldn't be so many people who are so fucking poverty-stricken that they couldn't get out and instead were forced to rely on the same authority that abused them. If the Spanish people in the collectives were able to survive in the middle of a bloody war zone, maybe we can as well in the aftermath of a natural disaster that does just as much as war to devastate the infrastructure. We just have to wake up and realize the awesome power we would have if we worked together instead of believing the notion that competing against your fellow man instead of cooperating with him is the best way of living. When people are made to compete against each other instead of cooperating for limited resources, there's always going to be a loser, and guess what? It was the losers who got the worst of it with Katrina.

Until the flooding happened, there was no great problem.

Now THAT is the most insulting statement of all to the victims of Katrina because it ignores known issues prior to the storm, and it is totally mute when it comes to the federal government's responsibility in the disaster. There were a great many pre-existing problems that were never addressed at all, not to mention the fact that Bush made them worse by not adequately funding the levee projects. Mass transit has been underfunded for decades in this country, and those buses weren't used much if at all before Katrina hit to get people out. As far as I know, there was no busing schedule in place before the storm to evacuate the poor and infirm. That's one big fucking problem before the storm, don't you think???

[toddaa]

24. The WTO protests are irrelevant?

Then why do the capitalists keep moving them to hidden locations?

[toddaa]

26. I don't smoke pot

And I sure as hell am not a Republican.

And from where I stand, you liberal capitalists are up to your eyeballs in corporate fascism.

[cassiepriam]

22. It works quite well for con artists nt