Has anyone read this? What are your thoughts on it?

Isn't concentration of capital being a problem a valid point though? If the rich are getting always richer while the poor are getting poorer and poorer and the middle class starts disappearing, that's a not a good sign for democracy, I would go as far as it even threatens sustaining the capitalist order in the long term. If more and more people are concerned that their standard of living is dropping and feel that they are on the loosing side of the sístem, it will always leads to more and more totalitarian movements - either egalitarian/marxist or right-wing - rising and threatening democracy and the capitalist order.

>first statement implies rich people weren't taxed
>second statement implies rich people need to be taxed a different way

What is your fair share of the weath that was created by someone else?

Progressive wealth taxation is not the same as just raising taxes. It could mean taxing inheritance but reducing taxes on enterprises because they create growth. Pickety talks about restructuring the system entirely so that you can get the most out of taxes by reducing inequality while still promoting business and growth. This is why it's a whole book and not a NY times article reading "We need to tax the rich more"

>first statement implies rich people weren't taxed

No, the first statement implies that the solution to the existence of rich people is to tax them every single time, even though rich people have been taxed progressively for at least 100 years in every Western country.

The first post was meant as a jab against anyone who actually thinks taxes solves something, which it doesn't, it merely inflates an already massive bureaucracy.

i haven't read it, but you can safely ignore anyone who suggests piketty is anywhere close to marx or is particularly controversial in his analysis

the fundamental analysis is r > g

from what i've seen his policy suggestions towards the end of the book are a bit more controversial

>economic vodoo
>literally done from a disgusting western framework

Please tell me how China is going to comply with his ideas about the global economy.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Century#Criticism

Here is a link to some of the criticisms of the book. If someone wishes to study the field of Economics I still recommend the book as a read but also understand the criticisms.

The same should be said for Thomas Sowell, Milton Friedman, John Maynard Keynes, Karl Marx, ect. (and just to appease the Austrians Frank H Knight)

He got his math wrong so the book is pretty much useless.
But of course, since it says what the academia wants to hear, it's put on a pedestal

the only criticisms there that are taken seriously are summer and acemoglu/robinson really, the rest are dubious at best - especially the criticisms of his data, considering the new methods that allowed that sort of analysis and how he put all of it out in the open

p.s. can we just ignore sowell, marx and (most, not all)austrians? piketty, friedman and keynes are/were serious economists - though keynes should only really be read now to understand his influence

no he didnt, muh academia boogeyman

The summers criticism is fatal. For the data to support the conclusion capital owners have to always be the same people.

youtube.com/watch?v=wNLPO2j9RQ0

I would seriously recommend watching this. They skewer it

>solution to the existence of rich people is to tax them every single time,
Yea but Piketty is not trying to solve that
>actually thinks taxes solves something, which it doesn't,
>implying

List some problems taxation solves then.

Because as far as I can see, the only thing taxation has done in the West the last at least 20 years, is start wars, create a surveillance program that makes the Stasi look like lowlifes, and in general grow the state's power.

But I guess people like you think it's fine that the state is all-encompassing and grand, as long as it's doing what you want it to do.

>NHS
>Autobahn
>Government?
>Primary education for most people

"He got his math wrong", you say.

How so?
Please elaborate on your criticism.

>do you personally benefit
Why do commies think that everything should be done based on self interest ?

>varoufakis
>worth watching
Worst economic minister we have ever had. His "theories" and "negotiation" tactics were disastrous.

have you read either of piketty's capital or summers article? your comment suggests you haven't

capital is certainly far from the be all and end all of the analysis of inequality but summers critique is far from fatal, much more research is needed to be anything close to certain and piketty's book is a very good first step really - as summers states

taxation is good at disincetivising behaviour

i could list some state run stuff that is generally good, healthcare, roads, general public goods etc but i dont know if youre willing to listen to that

So, because you get "goods" that are specifically designed to literally "please the herd" so they don't riot in the streets, this means that you are okay with them using your money drone-bombing people, and running surveillance on every citizen in the West.

That's cute.

I think that's a very fair point you're making. In fact I was just reading Carbon Democracy by Timothy Mitchell and he does talk about this in chapters 2 and 3.

That said, I think the welfare state has not been static in Europe or anywhere. What you have now is, in a sense, ostensibly less democratic than the first welfare states. And that isn't made any better with the surveillance.

I would still agree with Timothy Mitchell, even though he is a structuralist and I am not that into it, that the initial give and take (taxes for public goods) were a product of real democratization that was lost over time and sacrificed for the weird mix between state dominance and oligarchy we have in Western Europe now.

still more democratic than the rest though

Keynes was right about everything. Only problem with his work is that it was never fully implemented. e.g Bancor

Varoufakis does not understand economics, all he's good at is "muh game theory" and is a Soros agent.

I don't believe I'm specifically entitled to the wealth created by someone else. If someone labors to create something, that something should be theirs. If I want it, I should have to give that person something they deem worthy of exchanging for the fruits of their labor. My 'fair share' in this sense is going to be a mutually agreed upon exchange of the products of my and someone else's labor.

What do you think that human action should be done for? What idea is more universal than people attempting to satisfy their self interests?

>List some problems taxation solves then.
It's painfully obvious you're American

In the civilised West (Europe) taxes get you free:
Healthcare, Primary/Secondary/Tertiary Education, Housing, Roads and infrastructure. Just by virtue of being a citizen of your country you get the above. I understand this doesn't make sense in a country full of lazy plebs but here it worked quite well until corrupt unionists and local councils decided to take the piss, paving the way for Thatcher.

I must have confused summers for another critic I read long ago. Others have emphasized the point that wealth returns and savings rates diminish when a person's wealth is very large and secondly that wealth gets redistributed through misinvestment, charitable giving, and inheritance.

he probably means
>Financial Times said so

Your well thought out post is going to be ignored.

Even here on Veeky Forums there are die hards who think that if you never check the top percent, and help drag up the bottom, even if only occasionally and briefly, that the system won't eat itself. Because huge wealth inequality has never caused any sort of societal problem before.

That is only true under the condition you own the instruments and the material you used to create something, a. k. a. the capital. Then you have the right to call the creation yours. Because if you don't, creating new value wouldn't be possible in the first place. If you work as an employee, your fair share is your wage, nothing else.

The issue with is that it implies the capitalist order is worth keeping around. If it's the capitalist order in the first place that creates the problems mentioned in , ie "rich are getting always richer while the poor are getting poorer and poorer and the middle class starts disappearing", there's not much reason to lament the evaporation of capitalism because its wealth allocation benefits a small minority rather than the vast majority of human beings.

For the record, you're right the only way to prevent the system from eating itself is to grant the working class concessions. But why shouldn't the working class seize power from the elites that give them table scraps? Can you provide a good reason to keep capitalism around?

I'm Norwegian m8, not American.

And yes, these are all things you "get" for taxation, but they are also coincidentally things that would exist without the state handling them.

But do you honestly think having access to free education is worth the price of what Western governments have been using our tax money on the last 20 years?

I don't, because I see it as the Colosseum.

I don't disagree. In most cases, production is going to be the result of far more individuals than just those in the factory- the people who produced the machines necessary to produce goods to begin with are of course very integral in the creation of goods, and should be compensated continuously for providing the foundation for which products can continue to be made. It seems only fair to compensate them continuously- if their machines allow products to be made, why shouldn't they receive the portion of the value created by their machines?

Still though, we both agree that the capital you're referring to is built by labor originally, I would hope. Labor is still the source of all value in this sense, because the creation of productive capital like machinery would not be possible without human labor.

>If you work as an employee, your fair share is your wage, nothing else.

Well, your fair share is the value that you create. Your wage is not necessarily reflective of the value that your created in an hours time. It is in fact going to be less than the value you created with your labor in an hours time, because without the variable cost of labor, no profit would be able to be produced to begin with.

>i watched the zizek video

okay thanks, now let people who've actually read it discuss the book

I'm just trying to reach a middle ground between egalitarianism and capitalism desu because I developed this impression too that capitalism and generally history of humanity is like a cycle that needs to be tweaked a bit from time to time with some kind of redistribution to prevent eating up itself, otherwise it will destroy itself Matrix-style with some form of a cancerous marxist philosophy and revolutional movement.

>sowell, marx and (most, not all)austrians? piketty, friedman and keynes are/were serious economists - though keynes should only really be read now to understand his influence

Idiot.

Keynes and Piketty are the only strict scientific economists of the bunch. The rest are ideologues pure and simple.

First the poor aren't getting poorer. The data shows a small increase in income at the bottom of the distribution. Further the dollar value of income, even adjusted for inflation, is not the best measure of the value that income provides. Almost everything has gotten less expensive if you compare a modern product to its 1970s equivalent. This includes housing and big ticket items like cars and appliances. Medicine and college costs are a special case, where bad policy has increased the cost of service over time.

Second instead of encouraging discontent and sowing the seeds of the bad kind of strife (see Hesiod) we should encourage the poor to create wealth for themselves. I acknowledge envy as a fact, but the beauty of a system of private property is that envy is channeled into productive activity instead of destructive activity through forced redistribution.

>I developed this impression too that capitalism and generally history of humanity is like a cycle that needs to be tweaked a bit from time to time with some kind of redistribution to prevent eating up itself

But don't you want a more substantial tweak? Don't you want a world that's more meritocratic and less based in nepotism, or the family one is birthed in deciding their level of economic opportunity? The redistribution you're pining for helps to offset the inequality yes, but it doesn't solve the conditions which create the inequality in the first place. If you don't get rid of those conditions, you'll continuously have to do this redistribution process. I believe it would be better to do away with capitalism and attempt to create a more equitable and meritocratic world, and I think communism is one avenue of achieving that goal. If you'd like to keep capitalism around, fine. Just answer this. Why do you want to keep capitalism around? What makes it more desirable than 'cancerous' marxist philosophy?

Explain yourself, bae.

But we have seen the other end of the spectrum failing so many times it's not even funny. Advocating any form of egalitarianism instead is wrong in so many ways and always ended up even worse for the vast majority as it couldn't even come close to provide even the smallest possible amount of equality in the society while commiting horrible insjutice, genocide and other outrageous crimes against human rights every single time.

All in all, trying to push for equality is just as bad or even worse because it is an unachievable goal. As another user put it in another thread:
>To call the belief in substantial human equality a superstition is to insult superstition. It might be unwarranted to believe in leprechauns, but at least the person who holds to such a belief isn’t watching them not exist, for every waking hour of the day. Human inequality, in contrast, and in all of its abundant multiplicity, is constantly on display, as people exhibit their variations in gender, ethnicity, physical attractiveness, size and shape, strength, health, agility, charm, humor, wit, industriousness, and sociability, among countless other features, traits, abilities, and aspects of their personality, some immediately and conspicuously, some only slowly, over time. To absorb even the slightest fraction of all this and to conclude, in the only way possible, that it is either nothing at all, or a ‘social construct’ and index of oppression, is sheer Gnostic delirium: a commitment beyond all evidence to the existence of a true and good world veiled by appearances. People are not equal, they do not develop equally, their goals and achievements are not equal, and nothing can make them equal. Substantial equality has no relation to reality, except as its systematic negation. Violence on a genocidal scale is required to even approximate to a practical egalitarian program, and if anything less ambitious is attempted, people get around it (some more competently than others).

>And yes, these are all things you "get" for taxation, but they are also coincidentally things that would exist without the state handling them.
Says who? What historical evidence are you basing this on? Prior to the concept of state education, European education was ran by the fucking church who largely dictated the syllabus. All main roads, at least in Britain and France, were "the King's", who is literally the state. Healthcare was either provided by the church who needed things like this to appeal to the masses or charities, or by the state who had to take care of war veterans in fear of them rising up (e.g. des Invalides, Chelsea pensioners etc). The only thing that existed without state intervention was housing and a quick comparison between the slums of industrial Europe prior to the creation of the early 20th century welfare states and the housing estates that replaced them shows you quite easily which one is better.

>But do you honestly think having access to free education is worth the price of what Western governments have been using our tax money on the last 20 years?
Undeniably. I went to a global top 20 uni and paid a total 0 pounds, 0 pence in tuition fees. I saw kids from the lowest social strata, who were infinitely smarter/ more capable than most of the kids I went to (private) school with, get a top degree and are now at the top of their profession. Their grandparents most likely couldn't read and their parents would have had blue-collar jobs at best. Those kids deserved that free education and the benefit to the UK economy by their participation in it and the exploitation of their skills and capabilities is far outweighs the cost to educate them. It's a net gain. Compare that to 'Murricans who are in six-figure debt before even getting their first job and that's only if they're lucky enough to be born middle-class. I won't even bring up healthcare.

>I don't, because I see it as the Colosseum.
That's because you're stupid.

Well, this leads to a debate of the theory of value, I'm not an expert on that, but I'm sure many could and would argue with you on what you just said.

Eh, I've read both sides of the debate as a commie. I of course lean towards the side that says its valid, otherwise I wouldn't be here. I await the arguments.

It contains a lot of falsified data and outright lies. It should have been academic suicide, but its politically fashionable so people let him get away with it.

Additionally, economics is not an empirical science so his very methodology is stupid anyway.

I'm all for meritocracy, but I understand that a meritocratic world still ends up creating inequality because, well, humans are unequal. Doing away with capitalism and installing communism instead is the complete opposite of meritocracy and justice though.
I explained it here

>humans are unequal
How so?

>Undeniably

Okay then.

But remember that every time you submit a tax return, some few dollars or pounds who pay are going to go either to a drone that kills innocent civilians, or a fat neckbeard in some office in Atlanta, USA, looking through your e-mail.

I'm not happy with that, but that's also not a prerequisite of the welfare-state (used in the original sense of the term). In fact, who says that were to abolish governments or vastly decrease their power/size, these jobs wouldn't be take up by private military/intelligence firms? Don't you remember the extensive use of PMCs in Iraq/Afghanistan, or the fact that Snowden worked for a private contractor?

Albert Einstein is smarter than a person in a persistent vegetative state.

Rights can be equal, but aiming for substantial equality is an irrealistic and futile.
Humans are unequal in every single traits, they are unequal in looks, strength, IQ, goals and achievements, and there is nothing you can do to change that.

What's more, removing the monopoly of violence and surveillance from the state and giving it to the private market, would mean you're taking it away from a democratically elected body with a mandate from the public (even if it often ignores public sentiment) and giving it to private interests, who by definition only promote their own self interest. This is why it's ironical when Apple or Google get on their high horse and preach at the FBI for invasion of privacy.

I'm not really into that right now, sorry.

Yes, but the same could be said of roads.

Do you think any government official actually buys asphalt, and paves roads himself?

No, it's outsourced, just like everything the government uses tax money for, with the exception of police, military and the justice system.

And besides, your anecdotal stories of lower-class individuals coming to a top university doesn't really impress me very much, because people who are intelligent, skilled and willing to put in enough work will end up in such institutions anyway.

>they are unequal in looks, strength, IQ, goals and achievements
That is such a bullshit statement that is impossible to qualify. They are different not unequal. "Unequal" implies there is some sort of scale you can place them on.

Okay. Albert Einstein and your mother are in a room. You have to decide who lives, who do you choose? Albert Einstein is most certainly more "valuable" by your standards than your mother.

In truth, they're different but equal. In the same way that they both deserve to live, they both deserve to live at a respectable standard, because we have the resources to do this. That's all the welfare-state does.

I read your greentext block and I don't think it makes a good enough argument opposing a more meritocratic society. Let me address it by its relevant points.

>Human inequality, in contrast, and in all of its abundant multiplicity, is constantly on display, as people exhibit their variations in gender, ethnicity, physical attractiveness, size and shape, strength, health, agility, charm, humor, wit, industriousness, and sociability, among countless other features, traits, abilities, and aspects of their personality, some immediately and conspicuously, some only slowly, over time. To absorb even the slightest fraction of all this and to conclude, in the only way possible, that it is either nothing at all, or a ‘social construct’ and index of oppression, is sheer Gnostic delirium

Personally, I do not take these inequalities as nothing. I acknowledge they exist. I do not believe they are social constructs. Under communism, I won't necessarily seek to make everyone look and act and be able to labor the same way- people will still be different, because it's not their difference that I'm trying to remove. It's their lack of opportunity. Not everyone has access to the same resources to succeed in today's world, and I'd like to fix that. Some people will still be born more efficient or better at creating. I don't seek to change that. People who are born more efficient in a type of work will be compensated more for their labor in that industry (since they create more) than those who do not. Life is not fair. I do not seek to make it permanently fair. I seek to make it more fair.

1/3ish?

>People are not equal, they do not develop equally, their goals and achievements are not equal, and nothing can make them equal.

Certainly, this cannot be denied. I do not wish to make everyone develop equally either. I only wish to provide for everyone the conditions necessary to develop in a way that allows them to realize themselves and what they would like to do in the best manner possible. People are still going to be unequal in achievement, and I don't necessarily want to change that- what I do want to do is give everyone, regardless of their innate ability, the ability to educate themselves thanks to their local resources being adequate enough to provide quality skill building and learning for all. I do not believe anyone could see this in a negative light.

>Substantial equality has no relation to reality, except as its systematic negation.

Humans create their reality through action. You can say that egalitarianism is the negation of reality as it is today, and that would be true- because our society is totally antithetical to egalitarianism. And we probably will never reach a truly equal society. I have no issue with that, because I don't desire total and complete equality amongst all humans, but rather an equality of opportunity. I don't want to make everyone look the same. I don't want to make everyone act the same. I don't want everyone to have the same strength, or health, or charm, or humor, o wit, or sociability, or any of the attributes listed in your greentext block. I want people to celebrate their differences but not be penalized because of them. Everyone should have the opportunity to realize their desires and ability through their hard work, and that's the sort of society I would like to create. I do not believe capitalist represents that sort of society for a variety of reasons that I could go into if you would like.

2/3?

Well I was never talking about removing the monopoly of violence though, I'm not an Anclap.

But there are scales here. There's a difference between a government that has sufficient means to carry out their duties, and a government that has more power than any institution in the history of humanity, and can at any point it want, turn into Stasi with 21st century technology.

>Violence on a genocidal scale is required to even approximate to a practical egalitarian program

Well, in the sense that those who benefit from a non-egalitarian society will be forcefully trying to prevent its realization, certainly. I won't deny that some violence is probably necessary to dispatch those people who would stand in the way of a better society. However, I deny that this violence is 'genocidal' in scale. It could be depending on the size of the opposition, but I don't believe the revolution will ever occur without a massive majority of people being on board of it- the people opposed to it would be a tiny minority of individuals who benefit from the current wealth allocation. Those people, if they oppose the revolution using force or weaponry and are completely opposed to diplomatic measures, will have to be murdered yes. But I don't consider this negative- plenty of history is devoted to killing those who stand in the way of progress, and I think you would agree with me if I told you that murdering feudalists who attempted to prevent capitalism's fruition was for the better for everyone, because had those feudalists succeeded we would not live in as nearly a productive society as we do today.

3/4

Now to address your following post...

>I'm all for meritocracy, but I understand that a meritocratic world still ends up creating inequality because, well, humans are unequal.

Sure, I don't deny that, and I hope I've made it clear I do not seek to remove inequality in total from humanity with my posts here. Some people will be better at some activities, and they'll be compensated accordingly. If science sufficiently advances such that those who are NOT as gifted in ability could gain that ability through procedures, I don't see what's wrong with allowing those people to voluntarily enhance themselves should they desire it. Technology could equalize inherent disparities in ability, and I don't necessarily know if you find that desirable- but hey, if it leads to a more productive society, why would you?

>Doing away with capitalism and installing communism instead is the complete opposite of meritocracy and justice though.

Totally depends on what angle you're coming from. You're going to have to expand on this if you want me to respond to it seriously, because you haven't provided me a good reason to believe you're correct regarding this so far.

Sorry for the long response, I tend to take my time at explaining myself. Forgive me for my lack of conciseness.

>Do you think any government official actually buys asphalt, and paves roads himself?
>No, it's outsourced, just like everything the government uses tax money for, with the exception of police, military and the justice system.
>Every country's government does things the same way.

>And besides, your anecdotal stories of lower-class individuals coming to a top university doesn't really impress me very much, because people who are intelligent, skilled and willing to put in enough work will end up in such institutions anyway.
Yes dumb-ass, except in the case of state-education, more of these individuals are given the chance resulting in fewer ghetto-dwelling gang-bangers and a better educated populace participating in a smarter economy.

>Yes dumb-ass, except in the case of state-education, more of these individuals are given the chance resulting in fewer ghetto-dwelling gang-bangers and a better educated populace participating in a smarter economy.

It also inflates the market with overly educated people, making sure that people who don't have a degree will never get a job.

>Well I was never talking about removing the monopoly of violence though, I'm not an Anclap.
Well if the state doesn't have it then who does?

>But there are scales here. There's a difference between a government that has sufficient means to carry out their duties, and a government that has more power than any institution in the history of humanity, and can at any point it want, turn into Stasi with 21st century technology.
I'm not sure this is the case at all. The power of governments, Kingdoms, Empires etc. has always varied throughout time and in the case of each country/region. 21st century technology, along with the surveillance capabilities it provides, isn't going away (and we shouldn't want that anyway). It's only going to increase. Our choice then is to either keep in check the people who can currently wield that power (the government), or by taking it away from them, give it to someone else (private interests). I don't see any other choice, you are free to suggest one if you have something in mind.

>overly educated people
There is no such thing. If you have proper schools, proper career-advisers and teachers, people are guided towards the careers they will perform the best at. If you have more good doctors than you need, you just end up with a great national healthcare system and then use your surplus doctors to attract medical tourism (e.g. Cuba, Israel, UK etc.)

>people who don't have a degree will never get a job
That's not true, because there are jobs that won't ever require a university degree. Who would an airplane manufacturer hire? An Oxford medicine graduate or someone who went to technical college and then apprenticed at the local factory? What you describe is the result of poorly managed education systems where everyone and their dog tries to be a lawyer/doctor/engineer. You see this in 3rd and 2nd world countries a lot.

>keep in check the people who can currently wield that power

Yeah, but that's not possible.

How are you going to "keep in check" an institution that has a operating revenue in taxes of 6.7 trillion dollars, which is what the US federal government has?

You're afraid of "private interests" having that power, and yet the government is an institution that is several thousands of times more powerful, and several thousands times richer than any private company in the world.

Sorry, but you have your priorities wrong, if I can say so myself.

>There is no such thing.

Sure there is. If you don't have a vocational education in my country, or at minimum a bachelor(there was a recent article saying that it's now looking like it's being inflated to the level of a Master's), you won't get a job at all.

I am a victim of this myself. I have a vocational education, but I don't have a certificate.

And I can't find a job for the life of me at all, and it's been this way for 6 months.

T. Austrian memester

Yes but unlike any private company in the world, who needs to account only to its investors, the government along with all its defense/military/intelligence institutions needs to account to bodies such as Congress, House of Commons etc. There are committees comprised of MPs who check these things and while they often fall far off the mark, for reasons we both know, these people are elected by you and me. They have a fundamental interest in keeping us happy or they will not have a job. In the case that they decide to collude with the aforementioned institutions, then it's the job of the press to break the news (seeing as they have a fundamental interest to sell us "catchy" information we are unaware of) and then they scramble to form committees and do the job they were supposed to do. I'm not claiming it's perfect, I just don't see how it could be improved by removing this power from the government, considering that it military intervention and surveillance wouldn't just vanish but would be taken over by someone else.

If it's my choice I'll use my system of values and I value my family more than a stranger. I would choose my mother over Einstein in that situation. The objective or super-subjective value of a person is different from the subject value that a loved one would apply. Objective value is hard to determine, which is why we tend to leave such choices to private persons instead of the state.

I used the example of a person in a persistent vegetative state because at this level of diminished capacity a small majority of the public doesn't believe that a person is worthy of being preserved. The majority is still small precisely because the issue cannot be settled scientifically. It depends on assumptions about intrinsic human worthiness. The question of compensation is a question of value and similar to the above questions, and similarly the question of what is fair or equitable should be left to the voluntary actions of private persons.

Are you German? Isn't this caused by the crisis Europe is going through?

Degree inflation is the result of a badly-managed public education system, as stated in my post. How do you expect that doing away with the public education system, your situation would have improved? What makes you think that under a fully-market based education system you would not be required to have a certificate?

On a personal note, what's stopping you from getting it by the way?

This entire post is non-sense. You could have done away with all the crap and just said "private persons should decide everything" or better still "muh freedoms"

>Degree inflation is the result of a badly-managed public education system

How?

Degree inflation seems to me to just be the logical consequence of everyone being able to get a college education.

If anyone can do something completely for free, it seems to me it's not a surprise if everyone does do it, especially when it nets you a better job.

>On a personal note, what's stopping you from getting it by the way?

I'm a loser.

Its grammatical nonsense because I typed it on my phone while getting interrupted several times, so I forgot where I left off and wrote repetitive statements.

The point isn't simply "muh freedoms" but that in many cases questions of valuation depend on subjective factors or cannot be determined objectively. One size fits all public policies do not provide justice in most of these circumstances. Therefore the decisions should be left to private persons who can voluntarily match their subjective preferences to future outcomes through choice.

I don't mean that murder should be permitted. It is easy to determine the objective immorality of murder, therefore it is something that the state can and should regulate.

I already stated the reason in the other post.

>If you have proper schools, proper career-advisers and teachers, people are guided towards the careers they will perform the best at

I'll now also add "..and at which they are most likely to get a job".

You are not a loser, you're just not doing what really interests you or you would be applying yourself to it and would have gained all the credentials required by now.

None of the above is a problem deriving from the state's ownership of education. In your case, your country could be doing a better job at it, that's all.

>Therefore the decisions should be left to private persons who can voluntarily match their subjective preferences to future outcomes through choice.
You understand that it is impossible to apply this in practice right?

>You are not a loser

No I am a legit loser, but this isn't my blog, so lets just end it there.

Thanks for the discussion anyway.

No problem, hopefully you'll get yourself sorted. Think about what I said though. People who are in the right career wake up and can't wait to get out of bed and go to work (because they don't perceive it as "work"). I'm not even joking, I know people like that in all sorts of different jobs.

>People who are in the right career wake up and can't wait to get out of bed and go to work (because they don't perceive it as "work"). I'm not even joking, I know people like that in all sorts of different jobs.

Yeah, and that's probably because they knew what they wanted in life at a very young age, and had the means to get it, and also enjoyed it when they finally got there.

I doubt that happens to most people, and certainly not myself.

What did he mean by this?

Basically that if you give total freedom to everyone, then people will be able to choose their ideal outcome at every stage in life. It implies that by simply always being able to choose what you want, you can also get it. It's a very unrealistic and abstract view of things.

Sometimes it's also due to need. Jiro (aka the world's most famous and best sushi chef) said in his film that he never wanted to be a sushi chef or even a cook/chef at all. He just happened to have a wife and a child to feed so he decided to go for a job at a restaurant. After that, he decided that if he's going to be something he might as well be the best at it, so he devoted his whole life to it.

Not the user you've been talking to, but the fact that the governments subsidize research for the military to produce surveillance technology and armaments which are later sold to police agencies shows that no, it's not just private companies making this stuff. Furthermore, they set the legal environment for it by providing patents, trademarks, etc. Apple or Google could not do what they do without government support; the governments realize how useful what they create is for their own purposes.

Furthermore, you underestimate the power of national security doctrine, which is older than Western liberal democracies. You say it's the job of the politicians to provide oversight; they clearly don't do it, and in the US (especially) they are often prohibited from divulging the existence of the program to others under state secrecy laws. The press don't even have a chance to break these stories; there could be criminal prosecutions, and the editorial board is especially prone to become trapped in the same national security thinking and decide not to release the story. The NYT knew about the NSA's warrantless surveillance program back in 2004 or '05, but they killed the story apparently because they thought it would undermine the Iraq War effort. You say the system isn't perfect; that's an understatement, it's outright failing due to very core structural problems.

So yes, this technology actually would have a pretty strong chance of going away if the government did not use it, because the government's support for the technology, and their ability to raise taxes to pay for it, incentives the production of technology. Unless we were to live in an an-cap world, the monopoly on violence remains with the state, and what use is drone equipped with a cell phone interceptor to private parties? Aside from criminals, almost nothing, and if your biggest customer is criminals who are using the technology in violation of the law, you will quickly lose your customer base.

Funny you should mention that, I just watched that docu the other day.

And yes that's true, but I think it was more true in his generation than it is now. Most people in the West can simply choose what they want to be, more or less, and considering the amount of possibilities there's no shortage of ways to never figure it out.

All of this would be fine, the insecurity, if I was still 19 years old. But I'm not. I'm soon 30, and I feel my life is pretty much over at this point.

So you believe in a violent takeover of the state by a minority in the name of an ideology that insists on being the one and only holder of all justice, truth and knowledge and requires absolute exclusiveness, silencing or killing anyone that dissents, all of this because some vague promises about building a fairer society somewhere in the distant future...
Oh dear, I must have heard this somewhere before... How do I know you are full of shit?
Because at this point you just admitted you are a Machiavelliust sociopath and you are in love with totalitarian systems, how do you expect anyone to seriously argue with you?

You are just regurgitating the same old bullshit marxist propaganda.

I don't mean to say that freedom somehow can make everyone's wishes come true. I only want to say that freedom allows people to weigh costs to pursue their goals.

I don't advocate total freedom either. The law should prohibit certain harms to persons and property. The law should provide for public goods, regulate monopoly, and mediate collective action problems.

If you understand that true equality among humans cannot be reached and the only sensible thing is to provide equal opportunities for everyone then why are you against capitalism? Modern capitalist systems are supposedly aiming for providing equal opportunities for everyone. Hell, they even go full retard when they completely acknowledge the bullshit claims of SJWs, feminazis and dindus. This isnt an argument against capitalism.

>Paragraphs 1&2
There's not much I can argue to this, I agree with you. The issue is there has never been a time without technology and weapons manufacture and states existing together and co-operating so we have nothing to compare it to. What exists however are varying shades of the existing system and there are countries, e.g. in Europe, where the state doesn't act as badly as it does in the U.S. I find it more logical to move towards a successful example than just delete what we have entirely.

>Paragraph 3
I can think of a myriad of reasons, from employers snooping on current employees and potential employees (workforce management and enhanced hiring processes, e.g. checking Facebook before hiring someone), companies snooping on existing and potential customers (for marketing purposes, as is already the case), banks and other lenders checking you for credit-worthiness (Wonga already asks you to submit your facebook over even if you're not given a loan). Insurance companies, checking every aspect of your life and granting or rejecting your payouts accordingly. Law firms of people who want to sue you and vice versa. The list is endless.

Personal information is incredibly valuable for private interests not just governments, the technology required for its surveillance would most definitely not go away in the case of taking it away from the government. It would merely make its use unregulated.

>Wealth
>Created by labourers

You misspelt entrepreneurs

My parents lived in a comminist dictatorship, me also for a bit, and i can tell you in practise it wasnt about meritocracy at all, in fact quite the opposite. Important positions could be filled in by only politically reliable party members, no matter how dumb or useless they were.
Intellectuals and the burgoise were denied higher education at times, they werent let to enroll to university.
Now you tell me, how is this a meritocracy?
Btw this wasnt a flaw, this was a basic feature of every communist society that ever existed. All evidence supports the contrary of what you said, communism is the opposite of a meritocratic system. It relies on lower classes, the proletariat oppressing the smarter and more educated classes. It will inevitably deny meritocracy by default. In every historic example it worked this way.
>inb4 my infallible, perfect version of communism has never been tried

>It relies on lower classes, the proletariat oppressing the smarter and more educated classes.
>Higher class is a pre-requisite for intelligence and education.

Maybe you should visit countries that aren't shit-holes once in a while.

I'm no ancap but you realise that democratically elected politicians might also act in their self interest?
Companies act in their self interest by providing goods and services that people want. Their revenue comes from fulfilling people's wants. No company profits through fucking people over in the long run without co-opting the state. Of course that's not true in the case of a monopoly but that's why competition is key. When markets fail governments can step in as long as the government will improve on the market result.

Communist nations are necessarily shit holes.