Tag: Quote of the Day

Quote of the Day: Surgery Metaphor

Db0

A metaphor of how Marxists misrepresent anarchism and democracy

Joeldavis from reddit provided this excellent quote while demolishing a tired Marxist-Leninist anti-anarchist post.

Because workers do not exploit any class below them, as these barriers are gradually overcome workers’ states will tend to “wither away”

And yet it didn’t. Let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that Lenin was alright. Now let’s take this scenario as an illustration of the concept: “A surgeon is attempting to perform a heart transplant. In keeping with his beliefs, he shuns the use of antibiotics. The operation more-or-less succeeds, but the patient eventually becomes septic and dies.”

Using the logic of the Bolshevik argument, the doctor would be right to argue that his rejection of antibiotics didn’t kill the patient, since it was clearly a bacterial infection that killed him, not a lack of antibiotics. Anarchists would say “But if you had given the patient the medicine, they would have at least probably survived the operation.” to which the Bolshevik replies is “No, you’re just antidemocratic.”

Quote of the day: Words and Meaning

Db0

A quote about the use of words

Quoth Chuang-Tzu (c. 200 B.C.E) ((As seen in the book On Being Certain))

The fish traps exist because of the fish. Once you’ve gotten the fish, you can forget the trap. The rabbit snare exists because of the rabbit. Once you’ve gotten the rabbit, you can forget the snare. Words exist because of meaning. Once you’ve gotten the meaning, you can forget the words. Where can I find a man who has forgotten the words so I can talk with him?

This is related to my article on the use of Mathematics and language

Quote of the Day:"Anarcho"-Capitalist Monolith

Db05 Comments

How Anarcho-Capitalists lost their freethought.

I just discovered this quote on yet another Ning network about liberty which was unsurprisingly filled with right-“libertarians” and assorted propertarians. I felt it was too good to let it dirft into obscurity in a random thread.

Quoth Zhwazi

Mase R. Molina said:

What do you mean when you say [Anarcho-Capitalism] became monolithic?

If I had better words for it I’d use those! Anarchocapitalism isn’t a free chamber for discussion of ideas. It has an orthodoxy, a hivemind.

Their sense of identity is strong. They stick together and talk largely amongst themselves about the same tired subjects over and over, occasionally venturing out to troll enemies. They are not comfortable discussing other subjects. Trying to discuss other subjects usually leads to misunderstanding or mockery on the part of the ancap. It becomes a catch-22 where they don’t talk because they don’t know, and they don’t know because they don’t talk.

If that was scattered with different people having different randomly-overlapping comfort zones I wouldn’t call it monolithic. The thing is they all have roughly the same range of topics and range of tolerable positions on those topics as each other. This restricted range of acceptable topics leads to the above-mentioned loss of free inquiry spirit, and development of a hive mind. They repeat each others mistakes and think that they aren’t mistakes because others who agree with them can rationalize them better.

I don’t think I’ve ever had a gainful discussion with an ancap. Some have been fun, but never gainful. That’s why I’m not an ancap. It’s basically a big debate club of people who already agree with each other. The mistaken ideas they hold are side-effects of this monolithy, so I really consider avoiding the monolith to be a whole layer above avoiding their specific mistakes. To stay amongst them is to allow their limits to be yours. I can’t stand that.

Also Brainpolice has a nice addendum to it.

I agree with you, Zhwazi, but perhaps I could try to clarify and elaborate. What you’re saying is potentially true about any political ideology, and ancap would just be one example of it. The same thing is true of hardcore libcoms in my experience. But, by the very least, in terms of the orthodoxy of ancap, there is an inflexibility in which (1) word-association dogmatism destroys the prospect of understanding with other libertarian and anarchist ideologies, and other ideologies in general (2) an a priori conceptual apparatus is clung to in which rigid dichotomies are established, such as assuming that the only alternative to absolutist propertarianism is non-ownership and (3) a willful ignorance of other libertarian/anarchist positions and their history, only viewing things through the lense of a specific “capitalist” paradihm, and effectively denouncing that which deviates from the orthodoxy as statism. This can be seen most clearly at the Mises Institute. Try even suggesting that there is such thing as left-libertarianism to many of these people, and observe their reactions.

I agree of course. I’ve noticed rigidity from many other camps as well, from State Communists to Social Democrats but only among AnCaps (and Objectivists) have I experienced this amount of ideological rigidity. Of course, fundamentalist christians might be even worse but those at least don’t try to pass themselves as freethinkers.

Quote of the Day: Inequality of Wages

Db010 Comments

Francois Tremblay makes a very accurate quote on why wages should be always equal.

Quoth Francois Tremblay

Saying that inequality of capacities must lead to inequality of wages would only make sense if all work was the same, in which case the person with lower capacities should be paid more (for having to do a work more difficult than he can actually do) and the person with higher capacities should be paid less (for having to expand less effort for the same work). But in reality, the variety of work to be done is as great as the variety of capacities that exist in people’s natures. Since people can always find some work that suits them, or is at least proportional to their capacities, inequality of capacities coupled with a proportional inequality of work leads us back to equality of wages.

Succinctly said.

Francois has written an excellent short series of articles on the necessity of equality in society which make a solid case for what I always say in that you cannot have liberty without equality. Make sure you read part 1 and part 2 as well.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Quote of the Day: Scientific Boobytrap

Db03 Comments

The Archdruid figures out why economics fails and gives us an interesting quote

Quoth Michael Greer

There’s a boobytrap hidden inside the scientific method. The fact that you can get some fraction of nature to behave in a certain way under arbitrary conditions in the artificial setting of a laboratory does not mean that nature behaves that way left to herself. If all you want to know is what you can force a given fraction of nature to do, this is well and good, but if you want to understand how the world works, the fact that you can often force nature to conform to your theory is not exactly helpful.

And this is exactly the boobytrap that economics dive into head first. In fact it’s even worse than that since economics is not even interested in setting up artificial conditions at all. Rather, they are content to think of fantastical, often impossible examples of societies and then simply build an economic theory from that.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Quote of the day: MRAs

Db0

What MRAs really are

Quoth Twisty

Men suffer, O how they suffer, at the hands of subhuman conniving bitches who seek world domination through insane women-are-human propaganda and the misguided attempt to claim their own internal organs as private property. The MRA imagines that women’s interests control and abuse him in an ever more feminized world; he erroneously sees himself as a battered victim of women’s agency, rather than what he actually is: a moron.

Ayeap. Pretty much the experience I’ve had from here.

Quote of the Day: The "Free Market" Recipe

Db02 Comments

Kevin Carson adequately explains how the “free market” of vulgar-libertarians really works.

Quoth Kevin Carson

The time-honored “free market” recipe, among the ruling classes, goes like this: 1) rob the producing classes of their traditional property rights in the land, and turn them into tenants at-will of the plutocracy; 2) through coercive controls on the population, like the Combination Laws and Law of Settlement, make it impossible for the producing classes to bargain effectively in the wage market; 3) when the process is complete, talk a lot about how great the free market works, and justify the existing concentration of capital ownership as a result of the superior efficiency of those who came out on top.

So yeah, I’ve been reading his vulgar-libertarianism watch series which is excellent as a general rule, but I just couldn’t avoid quoting this particular part.

Go and read the rest of the pwnage.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Quote of the Day: Gender Equality

Db02 Comments

A Quote about Equality between genders and how twisted it is in the eyes of sexists

Quoth Lucy Gillam

The first is that true gender equality is actually perceived as inequality. A group that is made up of 50% women is perceived as being mostly women. A situation that is perfectly equal between men and women is perceived as being biased in favor of women.

And if you don’t believe me, you’ve never been a married woman who kept her family name. I have had students hold that up as proof of my “sexism.” My own brother told me that he could never marry a woman who kept her name because “everyone would know who ruled that relationship.” Perfect equality – my husband keeps his name and I keep mine – is held as a statement of superiority on my part.

Ayeap. This is what the shrill cries of males about “feminazis” are all about.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]

Quote of the Day: Criticism of Capitalism

Db0

A redditor points out a classic fallacy people make against anti-capitalists.

Quoth davex0rz

If someone criticizes capitalism and is rich, they’re accused of being “hypocritical” in some way, “limousine socialists,” elitists, etc.

If someone criticizes capitalism and is not rich, they’re accused of simply being envious, justifying their personal failure, resentful, etc.

It’s very convenient that, no matter who you are, you’re automatically discredited by who you are. That way, we never have to address anyone’s ideas.

Accurate. It is sad that most people are so eager to jump to ad hominem attacks rather than address the issues. Of course such tactics are not restricted only against anti-capitalists so every party should beware of falling into this easy fallacy.

Reblog this post [with Zemanta]