Following up on the successes of the Low Content threads, I present to you the Low-Content Rant thread!
Rant about anything you like! Statists, Republicans, Democrats, left-libertarians, silly right-libertarians, GMOs, corporations, stupid people, your mortgage, your stubbed toe, the fact that the acceleration due to gravity on earth is about 9.8 m/s^2 near the surface, and how you think that it's stupid to have a Low Content Rant thread.
Go!
P.S. - This thread is supposed to help people vent. We're not looking for fleshed out theories, but ways to express our frustration. Because of this, content may be lacking. In fact, the formatting might look awful and unpleasant, but that's the point. Beat up your forum posts to your heart's content.
I have a hangnail.
I think humanity stands united with you in your pain.
Oh, and I also picked up strawberry preserves at the store instead of strawberry jam. How the hell am I supposed to spread these hunks of fruit on my toast?
Wheylous, thank you so much. This forum has been in dire need of this thread for a very long time:
I just sat through an hour and a half of an ISO meeting. It was really boring. The people there aren't very smart, and they basically criticized Obama for wanting to work with the Republicans because that means he's going to have their welfare... Totally ignoring the fact that if he doesn't do this then the United States won't have had a budget passed for something like four years and will continue to accumulate massive debts. It's also great that they don't string two and two together and realize that their precious democracy has failed them for the 10 millionth time in a row. These people endorse Marxism while at the same time doing things that Marx totally despised in a time where if you buy into his theory it should take at least another century for the immiseration of the proletariat to get to the point where the revolution comes. They talk about how great grassroots movements are while at the same time lauding Obama for not passing explicitly pro-union legislation.
I go to these meetings occasionally thinking that maybe sometime I'll actually have a good discussion with these people, but instead it's just depressing. It's interesting seeing how people who are radically different than I am think, but it's really depressing watching people endorse violent theories which revolve ENTIRELY upon the economics of the matter while not understanding anything about economics. I was really pissed when they were talking about what's going on in NYC and I didn't have time to bring up price controls.
The most depressing thing is the fact that they talk about how great things like marijuana legalization and gay marriage are, how the government continually fails them, and how grassroots organization is the bee's knees, while at the same time wanting to "fight back" against the "oppression" of someone who gives them a job and who can't raise a finger against them and which provides a service to a large number of consumers. It's like watching a retarded person trying to walk through a door repeatedly, and getting half. way. there. every. single. time.
/rant
1 word:
Public Education System.
Just goes to show how effective it is.
“Since people are concerned that ‘X’ will not be provided, ‘X’ will naturally be provided by those who are concerned by its absence.""The sweetest of minds can harbor the harshest of men.”
http://voluntaryistreader.wordpress.org
Went to a Rotary meeting. Not only did we have to pray, AND say the Pledge of Allegiance, we also had to sing GOD BLESS AMERICA.
GRR, I'M ANGRY. YOU CAN TELL THAT BECAUSE OF CAPS, RIGHT? CRUISE CONTROL FOR AWESOME.
As much as I would like to vent, I really can't. If I were to open the verbal floodgates, it would get too ugly and too personal... way into the TMI realm.
I think I'm starting to develop a deep-seated misogyny in the vein of Schopenhauer.
Clayton -
I can't stand my US history class. It's the same old BS. Federal government is supreme because John Marshall said so. The Articles of Confederation made the government too weak (good!) so the Constitution was necessary. I can't wait to learn about the evils of Standard Oil and how Herbert Hoover did nothing during the Great Depression.
The people in my class are annoying too-I was looking at a study guide someone made for one of the chapters, and they mentioned that, at the Constitutional Convention, men like "John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Paine" tried to create a new government. None of those people were there-argh.
Two days ago we had a sub and talked about the election. It was the same old statist bs-although I did hear one kid in my class bring up the marijuana issue (I live in WA) as a matter of states' rights, which was cool. That's why bothers me so much. So many people seem to be so close to libertarianism. It's like they're libertarian in one issue, whether it's drug laws, or gun laws, or economic freedom, but statist in all other issues. I'm reminded of the Harry Browne quote where he says something along the lines of "the left thinks the government can regulate economic behavior but not social behavior. the right thinks the government can regulate social behavior but not economic behavior. neither side ever attempts to explain why government is so efficient in one area, but so inefficient in another."
@ Clayton
What is the "TMI realm?"
Clayton,
Can I ask to whom or what the rants would be directed at?
I just typed an entire rant and it didn't post! Now I have to rant about this forum that I hate!!!!
TMI: Too Much Information
@Neodoxy: That's part of the TMI...
Oh, haha.
Wait, that's a little mysterious.
Come now Clayton, if you had to many people and things which you wanted to rant about that you couldn't throw up half of them in at most a reasonably sized post then you would have died of anger by now!
Ay clayton let it out man.
Youre anonymous anyways.
If you need something sorted out gotta do it here right now. It will increase forum unity.
@Neodoxy: Sometimes, that's how it feels. This is part of what has motivated my investigation of astrology, Eastern teachings, etc.... general life-wisdom kind of stuff.
This time last year, I got into it with several people over Occupy Wall Street, largely trying to make inroads and push back on some of the more vacuous rhetoric. They all railed against the status quo. Now, almost all of them praise the affirmation of the status quo. These damn people...
It's one thing to vote for Obama and/or think he's preferable to Romney. But to celebrate as more poor people around the world are bombed by drone, inner city blacks are locked up at disproportionate rates, Mexicans above the border get deported and those below get their heads chopped, etc., is disgusting. As it's said, the lesser evil is still evil, and evil does not deserve your fucking adulation.
Maybe it would be a better idea to get this rant thread OFF of the LvMI website?
I think it's a great idea, but perhaps there will be embarassing/damaging words that come out onto the page, and it's not really fair to the good people at LvMI to have the forum on their own site get crudded up with terrible PR and momentary slips of the tongue. I know I would like it if it were off here because I could make a new user profile and be able to vent but still have the same like minded people to angrily press keys to.
Perhaps, Fephisto's or Autolykos' forum?
The Anarch is to the Anarchist what the Monarch is to the Monarchist. -Ernst Jünger
This entire forum is filled with embarrassing shit, I'm just glad we can concentrate it.
Anyway, my more recent "rant" has to do with liberals who've picked up on right-wing [statist] rhetoric. Before Obamatron, I'd only hear things along the lines of "love it or leave it," "if you don't like it, leave," "support our troops/president," etc., from the right, but now I gotta hear this shit from liberals who can't handle someone actually pointing out that Obama is no different than Bush. My first encounter of this coming from someone who believed government spending helped the economy, but that simply showed how little intelligence they had before going into shit about roads and then "if you don't like it then leave." Now with Obama on term 2 (or Bush on term 4) it'll just continue and continue. At least I can have snappy comebacks like simply saying "drone strikes children in the Middle East."
Bert: This entire forum is filled with embarrassing shit, I'm just glad we can concentrate it.
Really? Who is we in this case? The posters on the LvMI website and everything we say is, directly or not, a representation of the most progressive (in the true sense of the word) organization that I know of. Frankly I think it's a tad selfish to simply carry on with this and the burdens it entails, when it could easily be transferred to another forum.
Jargon may have a point, but not everyone has an account on that forum. I think I may have opened the floodgates.
If you search the ENTIRE forum you can find some stuff that I find rather embarrassing to the "opposition" or whatever, but that's simply how forum's work. It's not a perfect archive of discussion. BUT isn't what the new community that's proposed supposed to be? A more concentrated collection of substantial discussion? This forum is what it is, why not have a thread like this?
fegeldolfy - on Standard Oil - http://wiki.mises.org/wiki/Standard_Oil
On States "rights" (I recommend calling them states powers), or, rather, nullification:
Because this thread would basically be all those threads in a box with a ribbon on top? And I think it would serve it's purpose better also on other forums, where people could be more comfortable to do they thang.
My rant is against people who want to censor forums in order to protect the reputation of neo-confederate, child labour worshipping websites. Extremely annoying.
I'm leaning towards Jargon's idea, but migration is a difficult process... Well, I guess we'll see what the mods (especailly Danny) will do.
I don't mean to bash your idea Wheylous. Most of my complaining here is pure selfishness: I was about to unload until I considered for a moment :P
neo-confederate, child labour worshipping websites
Wait... what?
Clayton, I was referring to the fact that everything needed to 'embarrass' the LvMI is already available in the Literature, Daily, and Blog sections of the website. There's not really anything that we can add to that, especially since what is published by the actual institute counts for so much more than what we write on its website forum.
@ Fegeldolfy - Exactly! Here's the University American History line as presented by the High Priests and Priestesses:
Articles of Confederation were too weak, we needed a Constitution.
Counterfeiters were running wild and interestate commerce was all messed up, we needed a National Bank.
Jackson caused a huge recession when he shut down the Bank.
South started the war by attacking fort sumpter.
National Banking Act made the national currency more 'efficient'.
Gilded Age saw little/no improvement for the lot of the common man. I mean what the fuck. How can it be America's greatest period of growth but no one's life improves? Oh yeah it all went to the 1%.
Our economy didn't make 'consumer goods' it only made 'capital goods' (oh boy).
Required regulation, monopolies, etc.
It really kills me to sit through class and allow my fellow peers get jammed up with this crap without seeing the other side of things. All this woman does to describe economic legislation is say "it made things more efficient." :P
@Wheylous
Thanks for the links. I've read Woods's Nullification, so I'm pretty familiar with the arguments. I know a bit about Standard Oil from DiLorenzo's How Capitalism Saved America, and I've also got The Myth of the Robber Barons and Antitrust:The Case for Repeal, which are probably good sources.
In my history class we don't do out of class essays. Rather, every friday we get a question and must write an essay response. So I can't spend time researching and bringing up exact data and can only go from memory. On the most recent exam, one of the "short answer" questions was asking how revolutionary was the american revolution, and I said that it was extremely revolutionary, and the relatively liberal government allowed the free market to flourish, which allowed entrepreneurship to prevail, until the progressive era when the original liberals found themselves labeled conservatives, and the "progressives" (conservative means for liberal ends) became the "liberals". I even brought up Garet Garrett's comment about how Henry Ford wouldn't have been able to start Ford Motor Company in the 1950s. Unfortunately, without data, charts, etc. it probably just sounded like a rant to my teacher.
@Jargon
Oh I know. It's awful. If I have some sort of final essay where I can write whatever I want, I'm just going to use it to debunk as many things as possible.
We also read the first three chapters of Comrade Zinn's A People's History of the United States as summer reading.
I looked in my textbook, and it does mention Hayek ("Hayak" in my textbook) and Friedman, although it describes them as conservatives, not libertarians. It also implies that they believe the same stuff since it never bothers to make the distinction that Hayek was teaching a different school than Friedman. It was just "hey they both taught at the u of chicago so they must have been the same hurr durr".
Clayton: [...] deep-seated misogyny in the vein of Schopenhauer.
[...] deep-seated misogyny in the vein of Schopenhauer.
What does that mean?
To paraphrase Marc Faber: We're all doomed, but that doesn't mean that we can't make money in the process. Rabbi Lapin: "Let's make bricks!" Stephan Kinsella: "Say you and I both want to make a German chocolate cake."
It means he has a severe distaste for his ex-wife.
But what does "in the vein of Schopenhauer" mean?
severe distaste
I hope that's a litotes (yes, that's a real word, look it up).
Yes, I was trying to be civil about that ******* **** *** *********** *****.
I believe this segment gives some choice quotes from Schopenhauer's journals.
^^^^^ Broken link!