My pimp hand is strong.

Bastiat

I compiled The Derponomicon a few years ago based on a dialogue I had with a prog who was by far the most infuriatingly stupid person I have ever known. I gave him a quote or a video and asked him what he thought about it. His responses are in italics. I did not correct his typos. Here are a few:

A response to my favorite Bastiat quote:

“If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind?”

― Frédéric Bastiat, The Law

I was having that very discussion with my right leaning friend/employee the other day. Yes, humans tend to be selfish dicks that only look out for themselves. When it comes to groups of people, corporations, seeking only to maximize profits, that aspect of humanity is often exacerbated by the facelessness of a big corporation where the people in charge are insulated from the consequences of their decisions, whether it’s laying off 200 people the week before Christmas, or intentionally releasing a product that they KNOW will kill people but they calculate the profits outweighing the settlements and do it anyway. These are facts of life, and large groups of people acting as corporations are willing to take risks like that because they can always pass the blame off on some patsy and get away with their golden parachutes Scott free. So yes, these things need to be regulated, and unfortunately the regulators are also human, and therefor susceptible to the same corruption which is inevitable. Perhaps there needs to be an even higher regulatory power that keeps the regulators in check, like internal affairs in a police department. Or perhaps regulators need to be vetted and tested just like FBI agents and Secret Service hires are. Perhaps these regulatory agencies need to be held to a higher standard and simply hire only those who can be vetted and have a low risk of corruptability. One thing is for sure though, NO oversight or regulation whatsoever never reduced incidents and problems. Even a shifty substitute teacher is better than leaving a roomful of children to their own devices.

So the solution to corrupt government is to have an even more powerful organization oversee it, because what could go wrong then? And adults are like disobedient children who need the supervision of the government in order to behave. And, of course, the possibility of reducing regulation is equated to anarchy. Derptacular.

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I asked him whether taxes were voluntary. He said:

Not obeying a law is a choice and therfore voluntary. ….you might get away with it, you might have to suffer the consequences. Pretty simple logic.

When I asked him whether a mugging is voluntary, he said:

You could also turn and run. Any choice we make is voluntary.

It’s one thing to deny coercion, but this guy acts like it doesn’t even exist.

……………………

 

A response to this quote from Keynes:

“If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez faire to dig the notes up again . . . there need be no more unemployment. . . . It would indeed be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing.”

John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory, p. 129.

SATAN!!11!

So I am supposed to discuss the idea of burying bottles of money under garbage and putting people to work digging them up? Was this a serious idea, or just intentional hyberbole. The idea that the unemployment problem can be solved simply by employing people to do whatever menial busy work and whatever wage is kind of silly. It’s not just that people need jobs, people need good paying jobs that will actually allow them to be independent and be able to eat, pay bills, and rent. Simply removing the minimum wage, or manufacturing low level jobs for people to work isn’t solving the problem. Unemployment could be at zero, and it wouldn’t make a luck of difference is the same amount of people still qualified for food stamps and welfare. Removing food stamps and welfare, would just mean that people starve, or turn to crime and violence to provide for their families. The problem today is that no one is invested in America anymore. During WW2 it was a prosperous time, because everyone worked for the war effort (arguably the last legitimate war the US was ever in) building things, recycling scrap, buying war bonds, whatever it took. Every one was invested, everyone took part, everyone reaped the rewards. Nowadays all of that stuff is outsourced to no bid politically connected multi-national corporations that could give two shits about America, or Americans. Of the trillions pissed away on Afghanistan and Iraq, barely any of that money is ever coming back to the US. The US used to be a community, where everyone tried to help each other prosper…until Reagan changed all that. Now it’s every man for himself, fuck the greater good, and make as much profit as possible at whoever’s expense.

Note the lack of awareness for the rationing of most goods during WW2. And again we see the lie that people would turn to crime if not for food stamps and welfare. Finally, we have an obligatory shout-out to the great Satan Ronald Reagan.