aelf
Ashen One
I thought it's a basic tenet of Objectivism to let the elites eat all the pies because that's the only way common people can get any crumbs.
I am either, nuts, or...
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Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
And yet your avatar depicts a state-funded monument. So I'm guessing that we shouldn't assume that "corrupt" and "bad" are necessarily related, in your view?I'm not criticisng it because it is over-simplistic, but because government is inherently and naturally corrupt
(Also, lol @transhistorical conception of state)
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
I'm not criticisng it because it is over-simplistic, but because government is inherently and naturally corrupt
Although I'm starting to see the fun side of gaming the legal-financial system - I can certainly see why they do it. After all, if the "common people" are just begging the elites to eat all the pies... well, then it would be rude not to
Here's an idea: let's abolish the government, and see how long your precious capitalism stands.
Which State-funded monument is that? Last time I checked, my avatar had a picture of the Statue of Liberty. Maybe it changed without me realising...?
As for the rest of you - in your own way, you lot are just as cynical as Objectivists, don't you know?
[edit: am I even allowed to make a joke like that with the new PC forum rules? ]
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The statue is owned and maintained by the US government, isn't it? Owned by the National Park Service, if I'm not mistaken.
Another example of the State using its coercive powers to appropriate privately-built property, passing off symbols of free enterprise as..
[etc..]
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
The statue was gifted to the US government by a populace whose vision of republicanism was never what you'd call "laissez faire". Hardly either appropriation or misrepresentation. So I would suggest that my point stands.
How do you know that? To begin with, half the costs were met by the people of New York, as the pedestal was essential to the structure and was financed at the US end.
Secondly, how do you know what the private donors in France thought about "laissez faire"? However, it was not called "the Statue of more government pleez".
So no, really your point doesn't stand. I win
Ziggy Stardust
Absolutely Sane
Ayn Rand, care to react to this? Do you believe the private sector has less corruption than the government?
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
...Because it was explicitly gifted to the US government, to be administered on behalf of the American people?
Because the statue was a well-known cause célèbre for the liberal republicans (a sort of thumbing-of-the-nose to the various monarchist factions), who were not widely known for laissez faire policies. (It was under the Moderate governments of the 1890s, for example, that the French implemented a number of strongly protectionist trade policies.) Unless you can prove that there were a lot of French libertarians kicking about the Third Republic who never bothered to vote in elections or organise any public expression of their views, but none the less forked over the entire national contribution to this statue, I don't see how your agnosticism is anything other than spurious.
So, no, you do not win.
I don't know how you would go about measuring in a scientific way which one is "more corrupt" - but my shooting-from-the-hip answer is that they both have the potential to be corrupt in a very serious way. The coercive powers of government should be used only to maintain the law, instead of being rented out to private corporations who are gaming the system and leveraging access to influence channels.
So I don't think it's the case that either government or business is inherently more corrupt than the other - all humans have arguably got the potential to become corrupt. It's rather the magnitude of power - when government is involved, it adds a whole dimension of power which businesses don't ordinarily possess on their own.
@Traitorfish - if you want to try and "prove" that the Statue of Liberty is a monument to government, then go ahead. I'll leave you to the complexities of Hegelian Dialectical rambling, or whatever it is the comrades are using these days to convince themselves they are right about everything
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I'm not trying to prove that the State of Liberty is a celebration of the state in itself, I'm just observing that the ideological framework in which it was conceived, adopted and continues to exist are demonstrably quite different than your toting of its image seem to admit. If the only response that you are capable of mustering against this is to accuse me of being a communist zealot (seriously: whut?), then I don't think this smug "ha ha I'm right anyway" tone is at all warranted.@Traitorfish - if you want to try and "prove" that the Statue of Liberty is a monument to government, then go ahead. I'll leave you to the complexities of Hegelian Dialectical rambling, or whatever it is the comrades are using these days to convince themselves they are right about everything
You mean the framework of John Locke-style classical liberalism, which is pretty much a libertarian concept of State, and the basis of the US Constitution? Didn't Locke write in the late 1600's? I don't see how the "ideological framework" was different - same ideas, maybe a slightly different angle.
But we knows what Liberty is - both the concept, and the statue.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
"John Locke-style classical liberalism", whatever inconsistent attractions it may have held to the drafters of the US Constitution, is hardly the sum of republican ideology from that day to this. (It doesn't even explain the American Revolution- where is the Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776 in this Locketopia of yours?) The French republicans who actually designed and funded the statue were Moderates (as was the French government which financed its transportation), a political tendency with no particular attachment to skeleton governments and free trade; the ones who paid for the groundwork at the other end were largely New York Democrats, similarly freed of minarchist preoccupations; and the monument has since its inception (as in, the President unveiled the damn thing) has been owned and operated by the state. If you can, in all that, some blazing core of libertarian minarchy, then good for you, but to the rest of is it appears little more than an absurd and ahistorical idealism.
Libertas is going Galt any day now.
As for the U.S. Constitution, given that it was a Federal power grab and kept slavery intact, I wouldn't really place it in the in the "liberty" file of a document collection.
As for the U.S. Constitution, given that it was a Federal power grab and kept slavery intact, I wouldn't really place it in the in the "liberty" file of a document collection.
You're quite wrong of course, but there's no point in arguing as I think you are simply trying to push an ideological point and will complicate any tortuous detail in pursuit of it. The Statue of Liberty is just the Statue of Liberty - nothing more nor less.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
You're the one arguing for an idealist, transhistorical interpretation of symbolism, and yet I'm the ideologue?
Then why is it in your avatar? Pure aesthetic appreciation?
Pfft, liberty isn't about trivial things like "freedom", it's about the concept, and concepts exist in magic floaty Plato-space, where they can't be soiled by such vulgarities as history, facts, and the French. Clearly, you should have paid more attention in school!
You're the one arguing for an idealist, transhistorical interpretation of symbolism, and yet I'm the ideologue?
I don't know if you are trolling or serious, but that is the most sublimely ironic statement ever. Well played indeed, sir 
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
You don't know what any of those words mean, do you?
Cheezy the Wiz
Socialist In A Hurry
Constructed and donated by the French government.
