Skeptic Project

Because tech people are often so isolated from humanity that preaching about society needing more selfishness sounds like a good thing.

That and the whole social retardation thing.

You could view taxes as a necessary charge for maintaining the capital we inherit just from living in the U.S. Some blogger pointed out that a Haitian who gets a job in the U.S. automatically earns a lot more money and enjoys a better quality of life, even if he does the same sort of work he did in Haiti. He'd certainly benefit from a better relationship with the government in the U.S. as long as he obeys the law. For example, American cops wouldn't shake him down regularly because the greater tax base can afford to pay them decent wages, provide health insurance and offer a pension. Poor countries with weak taxing power like Haiti have notoriously corrupt and abusive officials who don't hesitate to prey on their impoverished countrymen to supplement their low incomes because they can get away with it; they don't try to shake down their rich elites because the elites hold the real power in the country and employ private security forces to keep it that way. Yet libertarians want to make the U.S. more like a Third World country, where I guess their chauffeurs would drive them between gated communities and shiny new highrises in armored limousines, while they complain about all the poor people on bicycles and donkeys blocking traffic.

When will libertarians realize how stupid they sound by referring to their fantasy lives as "evidence" of how a pure free market society would work?

I just noted another contradiction with the Austrians.

I saw Peter Schiff screaming we don't save enough. However if he and his Austrian friends think the dollar is going to collapse why should we bother saving? Go out and spend those dollars on booze, crack, and hookers because it will cost $1 million to buy a loaf of bread.

In fact if most people believed Schiff (and his own followers actually thought about what they believed in), malls would look like the recent crowded stores in Venezuela after Chavez announced that the currency would be devalued. I read the HDTVs sold out in minutes because Venezuelans believed hyperinflation was coming.

BTW, don't savings add to the supply of funds available for fractional reserve lending, which Austrianists denounce?