Comments on: Radio Crossfire: Antiwar.com’s Scott Horton Interviews Mark Ames About Libertarians, Socialists, Ayn Rand & Billionaire Parasites

By: Zhu Bajie

Zhu Bajie — Mon, 05 Apr 2010 03:21:10 +0000

StrangeLoop | February 20th, 2010 at 12:00 pm — “There’s only one organization in society that can steal my money by threat of gun: the State.”

You forgot your gun-nut neighbor!

Zhu Bajie

By: standard anthony

standard anthony — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:57:55 +0000

Fucked up. I meant the island of Dominica, which led to Grenada. Paul helped raise the money for this.

By: standard anthony

standard anthony — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:52:43 +0000

Ron Paul? No fucking way. Paul is a bircher and he used to do busine$$ with David Duke back in the eighties. Populist he ain’t. One of yer EXILERS should do a little research on his failed (Reagan backed) coup of Grenada with neo-nazi mercs in ’82-’83.

By: StrangeLoop

StrangeLoop — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 20:00:24 +0000

The government is an organized composed of self-interested persons that engage in political coercion and mischief (time to google “logrolling,” you pinkos). The government promotes many monopolies (e.g., education, cable access, production of defense and law, etc.); so, this is my best measure against monopolies? There’s only one organization in society that can steal my money by threat of gun: the State. There’s only one choice that is between the “lesser of two evils”: politicians. I’ve never decided on the “lesser of two evils” when picking a refridgerator or pair of pants. There’s only one organization in this society that commits acts of war and foreign aggression in the name of “defense”–its alleged fundamental reason for existence.

Capitalism is simply people cooperating freely. Exchange is not a zero-sum game; wealth is not a magical bread that miraculously drops from the sky.

Regulations do not aid a free society. Regulations are “captured” (yes, you can google “capture theory” now) by powerful interests. Large industries have an interest to buy off congressmen, senators, and other officials–e.g., gaining a $1,000,000 subsidy is great for them, but fighting it (the subsidy is a dispersed cost, it might only cost me $5 a year) isn’t worth my time. Incentives, as economics teachers us, really do matter. If the State and the marketplace are not separated, then the State and the monied businessmen collude. That is no longer a free market. If the State intervenes, then those interventions simply create “interventionist” chaos where unprincipled politicians benefit anti-business, anti-competitive corporations.

The dream world isn’t in the minds of libertarians; it’s in the minds of those that entrust a segment of our population to coerce, to drop bombs, to regulate our lives.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:58:01 +0000

Sorry too hog the thread, but I hate libertarians too, but I’m defending Ames and the other guy wasn’t a pure libertarin, I’m not into that shit.

I’m sayin you weren’t fuckin listening.

If your going to make threats, back it up.

By: Ron

Ron — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 06:54:12 +0000

Hey foo, do you want to beat the fuck out of me.

Come to my town, I’m broke, but I’ll stand in for “that Libertarian fuck”.

Jesus, you fuckin retard.

By: Justen

Justen — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 08:27:21 +0000

I think it’s okay to use force and threat of force to get what I want, but others who do so are evil when their goals aren’t in line with mine. I think I ought to be able to take from other people to give to myself, and I ought to be able to imprison and kill other people who haven’t harmed me because I find them distasteful. I should be able to do all this as long as I get together at least half the population to write on paper that it is good. This is democracy, and it is philosophically and morally correct. I am so sure of that, that I am willing to dismiss all who oppose it as childish, stupid and evil. Principles and ethics are for impractical people who don’t see the “big picture” and realize that trying to evolve beyond tribalism and barbarism are hopelessly naive as long as people like me are alive to stand in the way.

That pretty much sum up your mindless thug arguments, scum? I’ll go back to being smug over here now. Have fun with your stealing and murdering (or taxing and war or whatever politically correct words you scum use to describe your crimes).

By: machete

machete — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:10:26 +0000

So the government gangsters in Alabama make a deal with scum new york banksters. The Alabama government employees receive billions in kickbacks,etc. But in a Rand world, idiots like me think everything works perfectly, and the rivers flow with chocolate, and children laugh and dance and sing while I fondle them.

By: machete

machete — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 22:08:27 +0000

I’d like to think that Obama gave 25 trillion US tax $’s to wall street scum, but really it was Bush and the Republicans who gave most of that away. So Rand is the idiot? No, I’m the idiot. Because I read her. in her world, the bankster sheister hustlers are left to rot. In Obamas marxist world, they recive trillions for a job not well done. Which oddly enough is the same marxist world that Bush and the Republicans and in fact all the Rand followers live in. Go figure.

By: gatorade

gatorade — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 04:51:51 +0000

Ames blows another mic while he could’a been writing another cum Scott story. Lazy bastard, are ye 57 now, eich?

By: az

az — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 01:22:19 +0000

33: Nader wrote one such fantasy fiction, I haven’t read it, but maybe you’ll find it interesting: http://www.amazon.com/Only-Super-Rich-Can-Save-Us/dp/1583229035

By: Metallica

Metallica — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 00:26:13 +0000

@Carbon

You want a vision of the future of America, you should read Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson. The gist of it is that there are no policies in the future of America.

By: Directm

Directm — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 22:15:15 +0000

I found the last couple of minutes of the interview to be the most interesting. They were speaking about today’s disconnect between truth and action. It’s a question I have thought about for some time now. What can be done to address passive attitudes? Take it away Mark…

By: aleke

aleke — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 18:50:44 +0000

socialism, bitches

By: VPC

VPC — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 04:23:41 +0000

@ 25: That’s where I arrived on further thought.

Ames-style lefties say the powerful will abuse the less powerful, and so government is necessary to protect society from the powerful.

Horton-style libertarians say all government leads to abuses, so we should have no government.

Neither position addresses the problems posed by the other.

By: calripson

calripson — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:54:08 +0000

Yeah Ames, your photo should be you shooting a full auto AK in the (Nevada) wastelands. Let me know and I’ll hook you up with a Class III dealer.

By: wengler

wengler — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 03:43:45 +0000

Good interview but the problem with the discussion is that it was full of very esoteric ideas about what should be the organization of society. We should instead look for any power that can push back against the people holding our economy hostage.

Nobody in government wants to be in a position of responsibility when the economy blows up, which leads to even the non-corrupt doing bad things in the name of “saving America”. If you audit the Federal Reserve and it comes out that it has trillions in loan guarantees based on money that doesn’t exist what do you think will happen? A full and transparent accountancy that will drive the credit markets off the cliff? I don’t think so. It will be falsified and buried.

I think Ames has made this point before but this whole bailout is just the slower unwinding process of a Brezhnev-like economic disaster. If the train were to go 100 miles off the mountain right now, the super-rich might lose everything along with everyone else. As long as it teeters off the side of the cliff, the people in power can liquidate the industries that they can(this is why they howled at saving a heavy industry like car manufacturing) and go off to wherever they want to watch the train slide over with the rest of us in it.

What we have to do is find some American oligarchs who no longer want to participate in this economic treason anymore. It’s distasteful even to write that, but really only they have the influence and power now to punish their partners in crime. In the future, the organization of our society must change in order to survive, but right now we are pushing into a death spiral that needs to be immediately stopped.

By: Carbon

Carbon — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 22:26:33 +0000

@Carlito: I never said he was a conservative- but he does often characterize his thinking as libertarian.

Anyway, in the spirit of the interview, I’d like to ask 2 questions of you and the other folks commenting here. You see, I’ve noticed there are quite a few passionate and well educated folks commenting on this site, so I want to sample some of their ideas/criticism. I enjoy this site because I see people who continually challenge widely acccepted ideas, and present interesting new (to me) pieces of info. Occasionally, I’m led to reconsider some of my own positions.

Here are the questions:

1. What kinds of policies do you think this country should adopt? I for one, would like to see harsher penalties for white-collar crime, the end of the drug war, the end of the Fed, and the end of Afghanistan/Iraq wars.
2. Where do you see the country going in 10 years? I’m not sure about this one, but I have a feeling things will get way worse before they improve.

By: m

Tue, 03 Nov 2009 21:24:56 +0000

@ az: I completely agree. very well put.

By: Judas Chongo

Judas Chongo — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 20:34:52 +0000

Ron Paul is on Medicare

http://weiner.house.gov/news_display.aspx?id=1364

Spread the word folks