Krugman on whether the rich really need the rest of us

[nebris]

By Gaius Publius on 3/11/2012 09:15:00 AM

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Paul Krugman has a nice column on Republican attitudes on education, contrasting "social conservative" Santorum's approach with "economic conservative" Romney's. I'll let you go read; it's excellent.

But I want to point out the following (my emphasis):
But what about

Comments

[ragnarok20]

It'ts like Lysander Spooner said in his, "1837 Letter to the Massachusette['s Legislature," when he argue that, "I can imagine none advocating, at least in direct terms, so monstrous a that the rich ought to be protected from the poor." So if you are going to bitch about the disparity of wealth in this country, you have to recognize that it is primiarily government which creates it through their legislation or regulation because it ccreates price floors that prohibit the poor from starting business. There's a reason, after all, why Wal-Mart supported minimum wage hikes. They knew that their competition wouldn't be able to sort out the differences and would have to deal with the requisite costs of hiring more businesses. On the otherhan,l Wal-Mart knew that they could absorb the costs of business thus effectively pushing their smaller competitors out of business

without the benefit of theindustrialized system

[nebris]

Sorry, but Neo-Primitive Libertarianism is another dead end ideological delusion.

~M~

Re: without the benefit of theindustrialized system

[ragnarok20]

It's funny that you see comments as being libertarian when my concern for the distribution of wealth makes me a liberalterian (in other words, a jackalope). you are completely stuck in your ossified political spectrum and it prevents you from accurately engaging another person's philosophy.

you are completely stuck in your ossified political spectrum

[nebris]

hahahahahahahahaha

[ragnarok20]

One last thing: The rich don't need us insofar as the state exists. Given that the state is a monopoly on the coercive use o force (that is, they have the "legal" right to influence your life and ways of belief regarldless of any objections to the contrary), it is a simple fact that the state athroughout human history has existed towards one end and oneend alone" The elimination of humanity's free will. These are the kind of peopke who believe that they know what kind of life is best for you, despite all epistemological evidence to the contrary. You are your own person and you, better than anyone else, knows what is best for you. (At least, you have a better idea given that you have access to your own thoughts, which no one else does.) Given that you know your own goals better than anyone else, you have the riht to pursue them insofar as you don't interfere with another's equal right to do the same. After all, that is the basic tenet of libertarianism. Sure, go around and be douchebag, but if you punch someone then yoour actions

[nebris]

The Hive will always defeat The Individual.

~M~

[ragnarok20]

The individual is the basic political unit. While the individual itself cannot exit separate from the collective, as we are not some Lockean tabula rasa the fact remains that the collective is an abstraction from the concrete fact of individual existence.

[nebris]

The Collective defines The Individual far more than the other way round.

We're conducting this interface with English text. That shapes how we think and act. It precedes us and will exist after we're gone. And that is simply one example.

~M~