Libertarians are idiots.

[emby]

Every stupid little talking point they have is bullshit wrapped in pseudoscience and phony intellectualism.

Let me count the ways:

"Taxation is Theft"

tax
/taks/
noun
noun: tax; plural noun: taxes
1.
a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits, or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.

Levied = seize (property) to satisfy a legaljudgment

Here's my favorite part...

theft
noun
ˈtheft
1
a: the act of stealing
specifically : the felonious taking and removing of personal property with intent to deprive the rightful owner of it
b
: an unlawful taking (as by embezzlement or burglary) of property

So if Congress or a city council passes legislation establishing a tax they will have done so legally. Which is why if you don't pay it, you will be visited by law enforcement.

The law is specifically mentioned in the definitions of both "taxation" and "theft" so inferring that both of these terms are inclusive or somehow synonyms is not even true by the definitions of the words.

....unless, of course it depends on what the meaning of "is" is.

"taxation is coercive" makes more sense, but they won't change because they are dipshits. And if you wanna talk about coercion, we can talk about wages and corporate price fixing which is where the real theft is taking place. There is nothing nuanced, astute, or of any benefit to humanity at all about the nonsensical slogan of taxes being theft.

Checked bag fees are technically highway robbery though.

[emby]

"Printing money causes inflation"

The only real response here is "citation needed".

This nonsense has been peddled for as long as I've been around. And much like Twin Peaks, or Bloody Mary in the bathroom mirror, it has no factual basis in reality. And it never did.

Stagflation in the 1970s brought on by a supply shock gave these money worshippers the opening they needed to peddle their austerity bullshit and it's been passed off as gospel ever since.

If you don't know, you should know that Austerity is the government balancing it's budget on the backs of its citizens for the benefit of the investor class. It does this by cutting taxes for the wealthy and corporations and then slashing government services in order to have spending = tax revenues.

Couple things on that.

1. There is no incentive whatsoever for a national or even state government to balance its budget at all. The entire Municipal bond market is built on debt spending and most state and local construction projects are funded that way. Nobody is doing away with bonds. How much is too much is the only question worth asking.

2. Ten times faster and ten times more effective to simply increase taxes if you HAVE to balance the budget. But as we know, it's really not about interest rates and controlling inflation. It's about price fixing of exchange rates and capital goods. It's about keeping prices high and taxes low.


The thing is that the United States has been running stupid deficits ever since this whole stupid idea got rolling. I's so patently obvious that its a meme

► Show Spoiler

And we're just now finally getting the inflation we were promised for 50 years?

You can buy that bullshit if you want.







So what is the real deal with inflation? Well, once again, the definitions of words matter...

in·fla·tion
/inˈflāSH(ə)n/
noun
1.
the action of inflating something or the condition of being inflated.
"the inflation of a balloon"
2.
ECONOMICS
a general increase in prices and fall in the purchasing value of money.
"policies aimed at controlling inflation"

Simply put...Inflation occurs when corporations raise prices.

End.
Of.
List.

It has nothing to do with government spending and everything to do with prices.

(but, emby. you need to know WHY prices increase)

No I fucking don't. Because no matter what convoluted horseshit excuse the corporate office comes up with to justify it's price increases, it still does not change the fact that inflation can only occur when a corporation increases its prices.

Cost? That's another corporation raising it's prices.

"Corporations do not pay taxes"

More mental midget talking points. And this is where the business acumen the libertarian claims to be so good at gets exposed for the fraud it is.

What my strawman is saying here is that margins are a constant. They aren't. Anyone doing a simple break even analysis as a college freshman knows that. More importantly, the assumption of these margins as being constant feeds into the libertarian's circular logic about this whole thing.

If a cost increases, the price must also then increase to maintain the margin. If the price decreases, the costs must be cut in order to maintain the margin.

gotta protect those razor thin margins which are presently the largest they've ever been in American history


High prices due to deficit spending and national debt? There's no evidence to support the notion, because the entire premise is bullshit.

Inflation can only occur when a corporation raises its prices.

[emby]

"Markets are natural"

Bullshit.

Mises misses again. It's a cute premise though, the idea of trade and commerce being the natural disposition of mankind.

Completely ignores 400 years of chattel slavery and native genocide that laid the foundation for this empire of money we're sitting in. Or perhaps they were suggesting that chattel slavery and native genocide were also a part of the natural disposition of mankind.

Either way, it's bullshit.

Markets are as man-made as the money traded there. The notion of self regulation or natural price equilibrium has no basis in fact and that gets scary when you go back to Adam Smith's invisible hand being an allegory for divine intervention in markets.

I for one, don't like the idea of fundamentalist religious types in positions of political or economic power any more than I would like a pilot letting Jesus take the wheel during an engine fire.

Governments create and regulate markets in order to tax them. That's the whole point of a market based system

They're the same way about the law, too. "Natural Law" is simply the same dogmatic approach applied to law

Schroedinger's Liberty


In both instances, there's no natural force at work here. It's just people "gaming the system" to make outcomes they otherwise wouldn't get.

And of course, they cry about government intervention when they get busted for it.

[emby]

Right on fuckin queue.

American oil tycoon accused of trying to conspire with OPEC to inflate prices
By Matt Egan, CNN
4 minute read
Updated 10:43 PM EDT, Thu May 2, 2024

Scott Sheffield, founder and longtime CEO of a leading American oil producer, attempted to collude with OPEC and its allies to inflate prices, federal regulators alleged on Thursday.

The Federal Trade Commission said Sheffield, then CEO of Pioneer Natural Resources, exchanged hundreds of text messages discussing pricing, production and oil market dynamics with officials at the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, or OPEC, the oil cartel led by Saudi Arabia.

Regulators say Sheffield used WhatsApp conversations, in-person meetings and public statements to try to “align oil production” in the Permian Basin in Texas with that of OPEC and OPEC+, the wider group that includes Russia.

Free market my ass.

[emby]

Trump and RFK JR sucking up all the kook fringe energy leaving libertarians looking like the fuckin tighty whitey weirdos they are.


https://www.deseret.com/politics/2024/0 ... and-trump/

But Libertarians would rather stand by their principles of individual autonomy and non-aggression than pursue a populist path to temporary recognition, said Spike Cohen, a well-known activist within libertarianism and the party’s 2020 vice presidential nominee.

“If the Libertarian Party were to abandon libertarianism for a higher share of the vote, then we shouldn’t exist,” he told the Deseret News.

Come for the fringe ideology, stay for the disenfranchisement.

Idiots.

[The Outsider]

Libertarianism is so stupid even it's biggest modern proponent, Ron Paul, has openly admitted that it wouldn't actually work in practice.

[emby]

Libertarianism is so stupid it takes em an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.

[The Outsider]

Libertarianism is so stupid it takes em an hour and a half to watch 60 Minutes.

Damn that's one of them great universally applicable jokes. Works with all kinds of stupid.

[emby]

Ooo look at that.

I think all of the last 4 presidents have

The biggest grift on the American public is that inflation is natural. <==Libertarian theory. See above.

How our politicians conned us into accepting that is beyond me. Most things are as it turns out

Inflation has been and will always be a policy choice

Who's choice, you fuckin dimwit?

Corporate choice.

It's always been corporate control of prices. Would never hear the fuckin end of it if there actually was price controls.

But he's a trump guy now so he's not even a good representative of libertarianism.

[The Outsider]

I mean, inflation is an inherent part of fiat currency that isn't backed by anything tangible. When you can arbitrarily create more money the value of the money is going to go down. It's like the most basic aspect of modern economics. The problem is that we have no real choice other than to use a fiat currency because there aren't enough rare resources to be used as a backing for currency in today's global economy.

Inflation is also not a corporate choice, however, corporations definitely use times of inflation to artificially raise their prices beyond what inflation would dictate.