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comment by tacocat
tacocat  ·  3540 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: How the language police are perverting liberalism

Does financial regulation remove any level of your personal freedom? Because unrestrained greed is my main argument against libertarianism





bioemerl  ·  3540 days ago  ·  link  ·  

libertarianism isn't about unrestrained greed.

It's the core ideal that a person should be as free form outside influence as possible, without sacrificing the integrity of society.

It all falls down to your definition of free. I consider myself more libertarian than anything else, and find myself very much in support in things like basic income, road building, and so on. I do not support any fiscal regulation on people, such as demanding they cannot make more than X money, or anything else of that sort. Freedom isn't "government has no say" it is "government takes action to ensure everyone is free to do as they want".

Things like basic income are pillars of such things, where a person is free to decide a job is worth the time while knowing they aren't going to starve. Forcing companies to pay good wages, without requiring a minimum, and allowing people to work for whatever they want to, while making sure nobody gets screwed over for doing so.

user-inactivated  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I would like to apologize for the dots in this conversation. People are voting based on their opinion, not on the level of effort and politeness put into each comment. When pressed, though, we're "better than reddit" here at hubski.

shrug

bioemerl  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm not really concerned with the dots. I am very used to arguments in hostile cultures.

user-inactivated  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I am concerned when it becomes a pattern, because it destroys the quality of conversation on this website.

bioemerl  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It hasn't become a pattern, it is one, so far as I have observed.

However, it is a better condition on hubski than reddit, because likes are inhrenetly shares, so if one person gets severely upvoted in a conversation, the person arguing against them also gets seen just as much, and not getting shares doesn't hide a person.

The real danger is muting, in that aspect, and you will never know how many people are muted, and prevented from speaking in a conversation, while you can see the vote disparity.

tacocat  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Don't apologize for people agreeing with me. Not every opinion deserves respect for being expressed, least of all due to how long it took to write. The Turner Diaries took a long time to write, that doesn't make it a good book.

I have like no idea what this guy is trying to say so I'm not going to be able to refute poorly made arguments

user-inactivated  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

You missed the point, but I don't want to expend the energy to explain it to you.

tacocat  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm pretty sure I got it but I'm not a self serious joy vacuum who thinks this website is different than reddit in anything but size

Quatrarius  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Why don't you both stop for a moment and think about the things that you are saying. Voting doesn't ruin a conversation more than treating the other person poorly. Try to remember that the other person is real. If this is how you both treat real people you don't agree with, try to get rid of that as well. It's not good for your health.

tacocat flagamuffin

tacocat  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

The worst part about this site is the haughty opinion of some users that it's more than a link aggregator. Reddit was supposed to be better than digg and it didn't fall off because people weren't making thoughtful comments, reddit got inundated by idiots. Guess what? Reddit, hubski and digg are all link aggregators.

If you want to act like every opinion needs to be respected because there's a person behind it then fine but I will call bullshit on it if I think I need to. I'd do it in person too if it didn't cause social friction with people I see every day.

I'm depressed and cranky but I mean everything. If you don't drive certain people away from a community it's going to suffer. There are bad ideas. I don't want to hear them.

Quatrarius  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    There are bad ideas. I don't want to hear them.

Then please mute, filter, ignore instead of polluting the discussion with snarky insults. Right now you are the person who is being insulting and disruptive in this conversation. The nice thing about Hubski is that it allows you to neglect your own sense of self control by removing the people you dislike. Or alternatively you could keep it in your own mind.

    I'm not going to be able to refute poorly made arguments

    self serious joy vacuum

There isn't a point to add-ons like this. All they do is antagonize other people. "Calling bullshit" isn't an appropriate outlook towards social interaction.

I don't care about anything in this argument. I do care about how it is conducted.

kleinbl00  ·  3538 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not to defend Hubski but to get your thinking cap on:

It's my considered opinion that there was nothing about Digg or Reddit that gave any advantage to thoughtful discussion over thoughtless discussion. I do think that Hubski has a tiny leg up: the fact that you can't vote past 8 and can't downvote at all eliminates most of the magnifiers that refine Reddit and Digg comments to the point of circlejerking.

However, architecture only goes so far. At some level, if we want this place to keep from becoming a smaller Reddit we need to pay attention to what works and what doesn't.

mk  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That could probably go in the primer page or about page, some sort of encouragement to vote based on the quality and content of a comment or post, and to restrain from voting simply because you agree with the sentiment.

kleinbl00  ·  3538 days ago  ·  link  ·  

once more with feeling:

I've got most of these people ignored so I can just sort of go "libertarian circlejerk" and move on. I'm all about libertarians having their place to circlejerk and if they want to encourage and discourage and debate and disseminate and cheer on and shout down that's entirely their prerogative.

What you've got here is a viable mechanism whereby it doesn't impact me.

The system works. Don't fuck with it without a damn good reason.

user-inactivated  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Welcome, but I don't think it'll help. Unless you've witnessed that attitude wreck a community you cared about, it's pretty hard to keep it in mind when reading threads. We're human.

mk  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

True enough.

Maybe when you upvote comments of less than a certain length you should have to confirm it. Or maybe even better, for very short comments, everyone can see who upvoted it.

Of course, I am kidding. :)

veen  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

What about a word counter? Seems like a non-intrusive way to encourage longer (and often better thought-out) comments.

mk  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Not a bad idea.

kleinbl00  ·  3538 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It'll just make people verbose and opinionated.

Trust me on this.

mk  ·  3538 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Isn't that what we're all about? :)

user-inactivated  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Every time you share a post or comment, you are instead linked to a lengthy remonstration reminding you that even the smallest actions have far-reaching moral consequences. And a warning that upvoting a comment has the same legal repercussions that being accomplice to a crime carries.

Or just this.

rob05c  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

    It all falls down to your definition of free. I consider myself more libertarian than anything else, and find myself very much in support in things like basic income, road building, and so on.

You're the first Libertarian I've met with such opinions. 'Libertarian' is a nebulous term. I prefer the more concrete 'classical liberal.' Whereas you sound closer to a social liberal.

Or maybe Left-Libertarianism, another nebulous term. Maybe my confusion is because most self-identified Libertarians are 'Right Libertarians.'

tacocat  ·  3540 days ago  ·  link  ·  

That's a lot of words that don't address my question

bioemerl  ·  3539 days ago  ·  link  ·  

Except I did answer your question.

Financial regulation, when direct and applied to stopping a person from doing something, does limit personal freedom.

When it is taxes, regulations on industry that aren't hard bans on products, and instead forcing them to give information or use certain packaging, and so on, it does not limit personal freedom.

    I consider myself more libertarian than anything else, and find myself very much in support in things like basic income, road building, and so on. I do not support any fiscal regulation on people, such as demanding they cannot make more than X money, or anything else of that sort.