A Message to Libertarians

I am awakened in the morning by my alarm clock at the appropriate time as regulated by the US congress and kept accurate by the national institute of standards and technology and the US naval observatory, a clock powered with the electricity generated by the public power monopoly regulated by the US department of energy. I groggily rise out of bed and stumble into the shower to bathe myself in clean water provided by the municipal water utility using soap approved by the department of consumer affairs. As I dry myself I flip on the TV to one of the FCC regulated channels to see what the national weather service of the national oceanographic and atmospheric administration determined the weather was going to be like using satellites designed, built, and launched by the national aeronautics and space administration. I then proceed to eat my breakfast composed mostly of derivatives of subsidized corn, inspected by the US department of agriculture inspected food and take my allergy drugs, both of which have been determined as safe by the food and drug administration.

Thanks to the Cash for Clunkers program I then get into my national highway traffic safety administration approved automobile, having been licensed to do so by the state, and set out to my public school on the roads built by the local, state, and federal departments of transportation, possibly stopping to purchase additional fuel of a quality level determined by the environmental protection agency, using legal tender issued by the federal reserve bank. Using the GPS system designed by the navy and maintained by the department of defense I check that I am, in fact, on the correct course. On the back from public school I deposit any mail I have to be sent out via the US postal service.

I then begin spending another day not being maimed or killed at work thanks to the workplace regulations imposed by the department of labor and the occupational safety and health administration, enjoying another two meals which again do not kill me because of the USDA, and recive a check for most of what I earned, some of which is saved for me so that when I retire I don't have to worry as much because I'll have social security. I drive my NHTSA car back home on the DOT roads, to my house which has not burned down in my absence because of the state and local building codes and fire marshal's inspection, and which has not been plundered of all it's valuables thanks to the local police department. I decided to talk a jog on the city sidewalks past the city fire hydrants, city sewers, and garbage left out by my neighbors to be picked up by city sanitation workers to the city park conserved by the department of conservation. Afterward, I'm feeling tired so I take the city bus back to my home.

I get a call from my grandparents who would otherwise not have a phone line if not for the Federal Universal Service, and they tell me they are thankful that between Medicare and Medicaid their prescriptions will be taken care of. After that I call my cousin who recently injured himself to find that he is on welfare while he can't work, so he doesn't need to look to charity from me or other family members.

I find I need to unwind after this busy day so I turn on the TV again, only to find myself watching the news coverage of the government soldiers sent to Iraq and Afghanistan. I then log on to the internet which was developed by the defense advanced research projects administration and post on freerepublic.com and fox news forums about how SOCIALISM in medicine is BAD because the government can't do anything right.

More at:
http://www.governmentisgood.com/articles.php?aid=1

The state would be an oppressive monstrosity if it weren't kept in check by liberty loving citizens.

Check and mate.

And the world would be a savage, disgusting hell hole if citizens weren't kept in check by governments.

Check and mate.

statist fantasies. Only a fucking liberal would think that this copy pasta is an argument.

This is a complete joke. The FCC? Do you want the internet to be as docile and harmless as TV? Or how about the Postal Service, which is out-competed against by pretty much every private mail company. Or how about the fact that we supposedly have the strongest army in the world yet can't manage a bunch of desert savages. Subsidized corn is hurting the environment and food production, and never mind the fact that the EPA can use environmental regulations to strip citizens of private property. Phone? Because government regulations surely didn't cause the current oligopoly on communication. Regulations cause more monopolies and oligopolies than the free market ever could, the government exists to destroy completion and bailout weak, inefficient corporations.

Yeah the government's good alright. Good for destroying the economy and imposing and regulating morals like the citizens are children.  Keep worshiping the state.

>>7
Government: Protecting security of it's people by taking away liberties.
Corporations: Protecting profits and shareholders through any means necessary.

What would happen if the following services were completely privatized?
Let's find out...

Communications: So many different types of protocols and standards that the entire system collapses. If it doesn't, then a monopoly forms (this goes for all purely privatized systems).

Postal service: Only major cities would be able to send/receive mail. It's too costly to drive out to the middle of nowhere.

Military: LOL. This one should be obvious. Once big corporations own their own military they basically own the nation. They president now.

Agriculture: Enjoy eating pesticide ridden and genetically modified food to the point that you get a tumor every year. Don't even try tracing it back to the corporations, because even f you could prove it, they have their own military to silence you, permanently. But they're just protecting their honest profits, right?

Environment: Almost as lulzy as the military. You think the environment is in bad shape now? Imagine NO regulations. Mother nature just shit herself at the thought. Jumping into any river, stream, lake, even coastline would result in immediate death. Sorry, but caring for the environment just isn't cost effective.

tl;dr:
Government cares about the voters. Corporations care about the shareholders.
In a democratic system, everyone is voter, but not everyone is a paying customer.

>>8
Well said

>>9
Stupid, but still well said.

There's nothing wrong with oppressive governments as long as they're racist and Christian.

>>11
Race exists, deal with it.
Anti-christian ideology is promoted almost exclusively by anti-white marxist jews and their useful idiots.

>>8
"big corporations" are an artificial thing created by government in the first place.
>Government cares about the voters.
Utter fucking fantasy on the part of liberals, no fucking surprise their entire ideology is lunacy and delusion.

Communications: So many different types of protocols and standards that the entire system collapses. If it doesn't, then a monopoly forms (this goes for all purely privatized systems).
Absolute nonsense. All private entities gravitate towards a common protocol.

For example, take the IP/TCP protocol standard used by virtually every web browser and HTTP website in the world. It was designed by the IEEE, a non-government organization.

Or the HTML, CSS and Javascript languages that all browsers and websites make use of. All highly standardized by non-government entities.

Fail.

>>8
>Government cares about the voters
No, the government only cares about either getting reelected or getting that fat public money paycheck. The state only exists to expand the powers of the state. And corporations derive most of their power from the government. If the government is involved in the economy, it's suddenly in the corporation's best interests to manipulate the relationship. Regulation only hurts small businesses, the larger ones afford lobbies to influence the government. Why do you think the government only bails out the largest corporations, not the best? The state can non play in the economy without significantly hurting competition and destroying small business.

>>12
It's naive to promote an economic model of which the very basis is the profit motive and to claim that profits would never accumulate largely in the hands of a few.

>>13
You are totaly wrong here. Take music and audio manufacturers for example. They are stuck using MIDI. An 8bit serial protocol dating back to 1982! Roland and Yamaha have unsuccesfully tried to replace it with their own but competition  and corporate interests have turned it into a massive fail. There are protocols out there lot OSC based on server-client architecture that are by far superior but the industry just cannot communicate with itself turning this into a massive fail.

>Take music and audio manufacturers for example. They are stuck using MIDI
IHBT

>>17
That's a crap way to put aside a decent argument.

>>18
What point are you trying to make?

That MIDI is a monopoly? It is standardized by the MMA which is a multi-business organization, not owned by any one business.

Not only that, but a quick wikipedia search shows that you aren't stuck using MIDI:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/MIDI#Beyond_MIDI_1.0

Ok. I'll make this as clear as i can. >>13 was saying that "All private entities gravitate towards a common protocol." This is what has happened in the case of MIDI. Except MIDI is way too backdated these days. It is exactly what you would call ancient digital technology :p And it is totally inadequate for modern applications where for example you want to control sound and lighting via the same protocol. Or in the case of virtual reality systems, you might want to transfer color data, binary data and many other things in an integrating protocol.

What's happened is that many companies have tried to produce proprietary protocols for use with their own systems. Other companies have tried a different approach. They support their own protocol but maintain MIDI compatibility.

As a result, new equipment is condemned to use a 30 year old digital protocol. Probably the only digital protocol of this age still in use...

Now. I'm not trying to say that state intervention would do the job. I'm only saying that the industry has FAILED HARD to agree on a decent upgrade or overall change of protocol. Therefore i'm implying that the self-regulation of the industry doesn't always work. Even if that's to their own expense and the expense of the end-user/professional.

This as a result is holding back the progress which could have been made. After all the technology is there. They just cannot agree on how to use it in non-proprietary systems.

>Probably the only digital protocol of this age still in use...

Excuse me?

>>15
The only naive person is you pushing your marxist lies.

>>20
People "gravitate" to certain things because of arbitrary patent laws.

>>21
Ok, maybe not the only one but hey, IT IS FUCKING OLD AND INADEQUATE.

>>22
I think the theory that says "the market will sort itself out" is plain bullcrap. It does work in some cases but I definitely wouldn't call it a 'law'.

One libertarian argument that is just plain silly and proves that libertarians are blind: "Corporations are obligated to remain just, otherwise they will get negative reputation and lose business"

Examples of corporations being douchebags and not suffering for it:

1. Walmart using slave sweatshops in China

2. BP oil spills (and every other company oil spills)

3. McDonalds serving the shittiest quality meats

4. Toyota "stuck gas pedal" recall

5. Sony preventing users from installing Linux on PS3s. Then later suing GeoHot

6. XBox 360 RROD

>>24
Uh, I hope you realize that in the BP oil spill, there was a cap to limit the amount of money BP had to pay. The law was intended to protect smaller oil companies from going bankrupt during a spill, but BP exploited it so they got away with spending a lot less money they they would in a free market. BP "won" because of government regulation.

As for 5, and a lot of other problems, it stems from ridiculous patent laws, which are enforced by, who would have guesses, the government.

>>24
1. China is a dictatorship, trade with the developed democratic world is a lifeline to millions of people there and the path to economic and political liberalization, if they weren't being paid $0.20 an hour to stitch tennis shoes they'd be paid $0.10 an hour to pick rice, if they weren't trading with the west we'd never hear about how oppressed and downtrodden they are.
2. With state interventionism BP only received some small fines as punishment, without state interventionism BP executives would have been treated like common criminals and received mandatory death penalties, I think it's pretty obvious socialism doesn't work.
3. When native americans use every part of the buffalo it's "multiculturally social enviro-green tolerant diverse" but when evil corporations use every part of a cow it's "SHITTIEST QUALITY MEAT".
4. And I suppose under your perfect system mistakes would never happen, Toyota lost 100s of millions in lost sales and investor confidence, the error was their crime and also their punishment thanks to market forces.
5. They removed it due to security concerns, Sony has done an enormous amount of work to ensure that the system runs properly and does what people have paid them to make sure it does. Most people don't give a shit about linux and just want to play games, it's a fucking games console not a PC.
6. Property law = capitalism, lawsuits against being sold faulty products =capitalism

>>26
Factually incorrect.  Long before the US gave "Most Favored Nation" trade status to China, the world knew it was a genocidal Stalinist regime that murdered its own people by the tens of millions.  Ever heard of the John Birch Society?

Also, the social contract in the US is between the state and the citizen.  The US government has obligations to American workers.  To Chinese workers it has none.

Try again?

>>27

Pretty sure you didn't refute this point he made:
if they weren't being paid $0.20 an hour to stitch tennis shoes they'd be paid $0.10 an hour to pick rice
"Slave labour" is actually bringing poverty stricken places like India into prosperity. The only thing keeping them in poverty is the retarded environmentalists and liberals that stop first world corporations from moving in and providing them with higher paying jobs. In fact, even conservatives are guilty of this, with the whole "dey took err jurrbs" business.

Why don't you try again, dear sir?

>>28
>India into prosperity.
hah, india is an utter shithole and is showing no signs of changing.

>The only thing keeping them in poverty
Is the fact that they are born inferior to whites.

Shipping entire industries to the third world is UNNATURAL and caused by a malicious hostile government.

>>29
1. India is improving

2. Corporations decided to go overseas, not the government

Here in Ameri-kwa, the government and the Wall Street Jew bankers are so deep in each other's pockets and so far up each other's asses that no one can tell where one ends and the other begins.

If Goldman-Sachs can buy themselves any law they want, from Most-Favored-Nation treatment for China to fat Agency for International Development corporate welfare checks for every American job they ship to some Turd World shithole, is there any meaningful distinction?

>>31
 IGNORE THIS OK

>>32
ok

>>29
hah, india is an utter shithole and is showing no signs of changing.
India is showing no signs of changing? What fucking planet are you from? I can't think of a country that has ever changed more rapidly that India has in the last few decades.