Soundbites: Difference between revisions

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== Iraq ==
== Iraq ==
The War in Iraq is a failure because it was fought with the altruistic goal of “liberating” Iraq.  Iraqis don’t want to be liberated and they don’t want democracy.  A moral foreign policy should focus on eliminating legitimate threats, not causing needless American and foreign deaths for a religiously-inspired crusade.
The War in Iraq is a failure because it was fought with the altruistic goal of “liberating” Iraq.  Iraqis don’t want to be liberated and they don’t want democracy.  A moral foreign policy should focus on eliminating legitimate threats, not causing needless American and foreign deaths for a religiously-inspired crusade.
== Unions ==
Labor unions are just coercive (and often violent) monopolies which use the state to keep unwanted (minority and immigrant) workers from offering competing wages.

Revision as of 16:27, 24 December 2007

Soundbites contains snippets of factoids and arguments for use on other sites.


Capitalism

Capitalism is a social system which respects individual rights, including the rights to life, liberty, and property.

Drug War

The drug war is a miserable failure at stopping drug use, but a tremendous success for those would like to see America turned into a totalitarian police state. A free society must protect the people’s right to control the content and state of their own minds.


Prohibition

A common refrain, but it must be repeated: why do Americans trust their fellow citizens to raise children, elect legislators and kill the enemy but not to control the content of their own minds?

Media Monopolies

This is just a thinly veiled call for censorship of views the left doesn't like.

Why are you so sure that the state will enforce YOUR agenda when you secede your freedoms?

Corporations

If you want business out of politics, get the government out of business.

As long as governments try to control corporations, corporations will try to control governments. The only solution is to separate government and economy.

Anything else will only lead to increasingly totalitarian restrictions on speech.

"Corporate Personhood"

Corporations are obviously not people –they are groups of people who share a common purpose. However an individual does not lose his rights by acting on behalf of a group. The purpose of the group is irrelevant - whether a group exists for the purpose of prayer, or political advocacy, or profit does not change the rights of the people involved.

The attack on “corporate personhood” is an attempt to deny the rights (primarily the freedom of speech) of people working for certain non-politically correct groups – namely groups with the primary purpose of making a profit. This is just a veiled attack on capitalism and property rights.

Statism

When people spend their own money on themselves, they have an an incentive to maximize both efficiency and quality.

When people spend their own money on others, they have an incentive to maximize efficiency, but not quality.

When people spend other people's money on others, they maximize neither efficiency, nor quality, but their budgets.


Net neutrality

Why do “net neutrality” advocates ridicule politicians for comparing the Internet to a “series of tubes,” and then trust them to regulate it?

The One Minute Case Against “Net Neutrality” http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/net%20neutrality/


Socialized Services

Healthcare

Any government-mandated "plan" can only lead to disaster. Say no to health socialism! http://oneminute.rationalmind.net/socialized-healthcare/

http://www.afcm.org/

Imagine if the federal government controlled 50% of spending on computer technology, and had over 100,000 regulations for microprocessor design. How fast do you think your computer would be?

That's the state that most healthcare is in today. Compare that to LASIK services, which are comparatively less socialized.

Competition for LASIK service has dropped the price to a fraction of the cost a decade ago with considerable improvements in quality. A market for all health care services would have similar results.

Could the stagnation in medical innovation in these fields have anything to do with massive federal regulations and wealth transfers?

Imagine if the federal government controlled 50% of spending on computer technology, and had over 100,000 regulations for microprocessor design. How fast do you think your computer would be?

Free Trade

Immigration

Global Warming

The earth may well be warming, but the earth’s climate is always changing – the idea that there is an “optimal” climate is a myth. Adapting to a warmer climate has many costs, but many benefits as well. Imagine the enormous territories in Siberia and Canada that might finally be open to settlement, and the resources and shipping routes that will become available. Even if the climate is changing due to human causes, there is virtually nothing we can do about it even if we wreck the industrial civilization that has allowed billions of people to leave immeasurably longer and better lives.

Technological innovation has allowed human beings have to adapt to enormous environmental changes in the distant and near past and will surely continue to do so in the future. We should not cripple our best tool for dealing with a constantly changing world in a futile (even the most alarmist scientist agree in that point) attempt to stop climate change.

Environmentalism

If you want a clean environment, then push for better protection of your property rights - don't surrender them to the state.

Why do environmentalists assume that by giving up their freedom to the government, they will guarantee that government will automatically act in their best interest? That's just like assuming that giving up religious freedom to the government will guarantee that the government will force your particular religion on everyone.

Unemployment

Absolutely. Since graduating college in 2004, I've had four jobs, each time making 25-50% more. Companies were willing to take a risk on me because they could fire me if I oversold my abilities. If I were living in France, I'd be lucky to get one.

The glaring problem with the socialistic attitude that society can be improved by replacing voluntary economic activity with a coercive regulatory state is that human beings are not cogs in a machine. They do not passively follow new regulations, but proactively respond to incentives. Faced with the practical impossibility of firing unproductive workers, employers would rather not hire them in the first place. They can hardly be blamed for this, for their alternative is to play a game of Russian roulette and risk being bankrupted with unproductive or even counter-productive employees. They must try to find people who are passionate about their jobs because once hired, they will earn a salary whether or not they work for it.

Second Amendment

"The strongest reason for the people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government." - Thomas Jefferson

"Are we at last brought to such a humiliating and debasing degradation that we cannot be trusted with arms for our own self-defense?" - Patrick Henry


Iraq

The War in Iraq is a failure because it was fought with the altruistic goal of “liberating” Iraq. Iraqis don’t want to be liberated and they don’t want democracy. A moral foreign policy should focus on eliminating legitimate threats, not causing needless American and foreign deaths for a religiously-inspired crusade.


Unions

Labor unions are just coercive (and often violent) monopolies which use the state to keep unwanted (minority and immigrant) workers from offering competing wages.