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Messages - BobRobertson

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31
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 28, 2011, 01:12:36 PM »
The Incredibles, I suppose,

One of my all-time favorite movies. Right up there with Becket and Patton.

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... and Wall-E, or whatever.  Maybe another Pixar production or two was worth watching....

Wall-E was one of the most economically (and technologically) IGNORANT movies I have ever witnessed. Pretty, though.

Recently re-watched the 1962 Mancurian Candidate. Wonderful, and very obviously why it was forced into obscurity for so long after it was made.

32
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 27, 2011, 02:28:21 PM »
Well they are obscure movies from my childhood, most people have probably only seen a few, and most dont like any of them.

Totoro is not obscure, if you like Japanese cartoons, "Anime". It's considered an icon of the industry in fact.

I suggest you get onto NetFlix or RedBox and see if you can find "Spirited Away", by the same Miyazaki guy who made Totoro, Naausica and the Valley of the Wind, Laputa: The Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle and Ponyo.

Really, ALL of those films are fantastic. Sure, they're primarily for kids (although you could fool me with the imagery in Mononoke, Sheesh! My daughter doesn't like that one), but they are beautifully made and put American cartoons to freaking SHAME.

http://www.nausicaa.net/miyazaki/films/


33
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 26, 2011, 09:33:41 AM »
Presently watching Monsters Inc. with the 3-year-old, and want to note that when Boo runs into the group of kids, they're in company-run day-care for children of employees.

Private schooling. Who'd'a thunk it?

34
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 24, 2011, 07:54:45 PM »
Just watched it from your recommendation. Im glad I did, although the ending was a bit odd.

Heres a megavideo link for those that use that site: http://www.megavideo.com/?v=HTOQ6SY3

I put it in my NetFlix queue. My ISP has me on the "three strikes and you're out" list, the RIAA/MPAA decided that I'm a dangerous terrorist for having previewed one of their chosen spew at home to see if I'd like it rather than paying for a theater ticket.

The latest Robin Hood, and no, it wasn't worth a theater ticket.

But still, no bittorrent for anything but unlicensed anime, at least until Copyright is declared null and void.

35
General / Re: Don't initiate violence?
« on: January 17, 2011, 08:27:22 PM »
I post it because I am pro-freedom. You are not.

I have challenged your pessimism, and you insult me.

I have asked you to be precise, and you insult me.

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You want to enable some jerk to goosestep into our lives and tell us what to do

If you would, please, point to where I have stated such a desire?

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You're just like a Bolshevik in thinking that if you want something badly enough, human nature will conform to let your vision happen.

In direct contradiction to your insulting projection, what I assert is that competition works. Existing human nature has the pervasive aspects of "disutility of labor", that people do not want to work, and self-interest. Laziness and greed, in the common vernacular.

Only a free market environment prospers because of these aspects of human nature. The greedy must satisfy other's wants in order to make a profit, and the better they satisfy those wants, cheaply, efficiently, easily, the greater their profits.

Within any institution with the power of "legitimate" coercion, such basic human drives become incentives to the very abuses of government that humans have been dealing with for millennia. No matter how limited such an institution may be when instituted, such as the US Constitution, it will grow into leviathan because it always has.

My rejection of the necessity of any institution with the monopoly on coercion is a recognition of the basic motivations of human beings, and the environment where those motivations become beneficial rather than destructive.

Thus, competition in everything including private insurance. That's all the "protection agencies" are, insurance companies that do not have government courts and police to do the dirty work.

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People will not change in basic ways to give you your political goal, and the history of communism should have shown you that.

Indeed history did. Which is why I find your projections insulting, and your clinging to minarchy to be justifiable by your having the very motivations you are projecting falsely to me.

Seriously, why do you think minarchy is going to work this time? Do you think it hasn't been tried? Maybe if it is implemented by the right people this time? (the same assertion made, in case you don't recognize it, about socialism by socialists)

Minarchy, and the culture to preserve it.

The culture able to preserve it doesn't need it.

36
General / Re: Don't initiate violence?
« on: January 16, 2011, 07:24:17 AM »
So, because people will form hierarchies, those groups will eventually morph into governments. 

Why? You make this assertion, but provide no basis for it.
 
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I am also not confusing government with governance. Up above you can see that I used both terms. Lots of governance isn't fun either.

Your use of the terms interchangeably is what I object to.

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That quote is kinda retarded. Anarchy will give rise to the next despot. People suck.

And you post on a forum dedicated to individual liberty....why?


37
General / Re: What Video Games Are You Currently playing?
« on: January 16, 2011, 07:20:36 AM »
I gave my self a new years gift of one month on http://www.vendetta-online.com/

If you enjoy space games, they allow a new player to play for 8 hours before having to pay for it.

38
General / Re: Don't initiate violence?
« on: January 15, 2011, 05:01:28 PM »
With or without governments, people will coerce others. Its not the nature of man, or anything. Most people are good. Its just that there is a small percentage of people who suck.

So? All that means is that there will always be a need for security services and self defense.

And, sad to say, Lawyers. Or better yet, "experts in contracts, adjudication and mediation".

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Its inevitable too. People will form hierarchies just naturally. A large enough group of people with a common goal, if not given any specific instruction to do so, will choose,a leader. It just happens. We're social animals, and there is no escaping that.

Again, so?

I also expect there will be churches.

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That means that people will always have governance in their lives, one way or another. Its inevitable.

You're confusing "governance" with "government". Governance is a natural attribute of agreement, since one must govern their own actions in order to cooperate with others, and it works best to have agreed upon rules that everyone knows.

Government is the institution with the monopoly on the legitimate initiation of coercion. Without that legitimacy, a private person for example, the one who initiates coercion is assumed to be wrong.

There are natural leaders as well as natural followers. So long as coercion remains something that a leader can get "legitimately", those who crave power will gravitate to it.

Without the institution of "legitimate" coercion, those who use and advocate the use of coercion have nothing to hide behind.

"There are some troubles from which mankind can never escape. . . .
 [The anarchists] have never claimed that liberty will bring perfection;
 they simply say that its results are vastly preferable to those that
 follow from authority....
 As a choice of blessings, liberty is the greater; as a choice of evils,
 liberty is the smaller. Then liberty always says the Anarchist. No use
 of force except against the invader."
 --- Benjamin Tucker

Edit: I can also suggest this by Tom Woods, http://www.lewrockwell.com/woods/woods161.html

39
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 15, 2011, 04:46:08 PM »
Knight and Day

Didn't expect to enjoy it, but did.  It was so playfully ridiculous that it was entertaining.  Tom Cruise was actually decent, too.  The DTS HD sound was good, and the score was great.

I found much the same. Had to watch it on an airplane, and expected to hate it. Instead, I was entertained.

Fair recommendation. I'll try it.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0110588/

Not particularly good, even considering the cast. Very slow "slice of life" and biography kind of movie. Very missable.

40
General / Re: What Video Games Are You Currently playing?
« on: January 15, 2011, 04:39:29 PM »

41
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: January 11, 2011, 06:58:48 AM »
I'd heard so much good stuff about The Big Lebowski that I tried that one.

You didn't ask me. You lasted longer than I did. Blah.

42
General / Re: Don't initiate violence?
« on: January 11, 2011, 06:52:37 AM »
The problem seems to me to be an assumption that without the threat of state coercion, people will coerce each other. The Hobbsian war of All against All.

What is forgotten is responsibility.

Violence is not the only way to "correct" bad behavior. Outlawry in an economic sense, that being "boycott". Bad debts means people refuse to do business with you.

Maybe someone would, but like underground bookies and loan sharks now, those are not the kind of people that it's healthy to do business with long term.

The "shift problem" ignores all the other ways that people have to interact other than violence. Did you beat up your grocer this morning?

No?

Why not?

43
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: December 26, 2010, 08:39:13 AM »
The Expendables.

Very aptly named, don't bother. I pity anyone who paid for a theater ticket.

44
General / Re: Last movie you've watched
« on: December 21, 2010, 06:22:06 PM »
Sparticus


Excellent commentary track. Ustinov and Douglas' take on it make the movie even better.

45
General / Re: What is the best audio introduction to liberty?
« on: December 11, 2010, 07:16:35 PM »
...or for free at audible.com if you have edit a credit
card and sign up.

I tried Audible.com, but their proprietary format alienated me.

I refuse to deal with people who will not let me use my choice of OS, and Audible does not do Linux at all.

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