Gary Johnson: “I’m neither Hillary nor Trump, please vote for me. The fewer questions you ask, the more attractive I am.”
The more this guy talks, the more convinced I am that I made the right call. (I don’t vote, period–not for Ron Paul, not for anybody. But I mean, I have been trolling GJ on Facebook. And I regret nothing!)
Look kids, Gary Johnson is going to get destroyed in the Electoral College in November. So don’t tell me, “He’s so much better than Trump/Clinton!” That’s not the point. Do you send a job application to the Lakers because being an NBA player is so much better than your current job?
There are various justifications for libertarians concentrating their support on a “focal point,” notwithstanding imperfections. But at some point, surely you have to say, “This guy is way too mushy and incoherent for me to cast my meaningless vote upon.” Where do you draw the line? Suppose Johnson said, “I support the draft, but only for single men between the ages of 18-29”?
Thanks to Tho Bishop for grabbing this short clip (at my request).
I like the fact that he is so consistent in his citing which moral principles he bases his impositions on. (Do his rules apply to pies, too? Nope, only cakes. Especially marijuana-laced cakes.)
On a cold April morning some 241 years ago 70 odd farmers assembled in Lexington, Massachusetts with no good idea of what they were supposed to do or what they might accomplish. There main common motivator was that they had had enough of following rules made for them by a government that they had no other way to influence except by force of arms. Eight of them paid for their action with their lives. Much more bloodshed would follow. One outcome was at least some small increase in the ability of those Lexington farmers to influence the decisions of those that would lord over them. I’m not going to throw away that small gain no matter how feeble it may seem. I plead with everyone to vote.
I found Johnson perfectly coherent on the cake issue. Here is how I interpreted his position: If I am a baker and I bake a wedding cake and put it in my store window with a “for sale – $75 cash and carry” sign on it then, anyone who comes along – gay, straight, mormon or muslim that is willing to meet my stated terms ought be entitled to buy that cake even if I don’t really care to do business with one of ‘those people.” That is pretty much in line with current law and BTW pretty much in line with my own belief of what is right and proper. If, on the other hand, someone comes along and says “I’d like that cake but will you please put swastikas on it, or will you deliver it and serve it to my private function where we will be sacrificing white lab rats to Hilaria, goddess of the progressive utopia, then I ought to have the right to refuse. I will grant you that for Johnson to answer Cooper with a slightly nuanced view was foolish. So, I don’t find Johnson incoherent so much as inept at dealing with the MSM.
So if I have that sign up and a serial killer on the lam wants to buy it, you think I’m morally obligated to sell it to him?
Silas, no, of course not. You have a right to protect yourself from someone you have valid reason to think will do you physical harm.
Sorry, but you’re dodging the core dilemma here. Assume the serial killer is unable to actually kill anyone right now (due to exhaustion and nutrient deficiency), and that even if he eats, it will be a while before that changes. Now what?
If you cannot be prevented from selling to gay people then you also should not be prevented from selling to serial killers. That does not in any way stop you from detaining the serial killer or informing the police of his whereabouts.
My above comment is wrong, at least according to the law. You are only prevented from discriminating against specific protected groups – race, sex, religion, disability. Anything else is fair game, I think. The law does not compel you to sell to serial killers.
What if, in addition to that sign, I also have a sign up that says “we reserve the right to refuse service to anybody?” Which sign takes priority?
It’s also clearly the case that sellers must be free to change the terms of their sales at some point — nobody seriously protests in front of gas stations that they’re somehow in violation of “what is right and proper” because they don’t charge the same prices they did back in 1955. They’ve changed their terms. At what point, may I ask, is it “too late” for a seller to change his mind about what he wants in return for his goods? I would suggest that point does not arrive until the exchange has actually taken place — once I’ve given you my $75 and you’ve given me your cake (or we’ve entered into a firm contractual agreement to make the exchange at a later time), then it’s too late for you to change the terms. At any point up until goods actually change hands or contracts are actually signed, however, either of us can change his mind.
Is there something wrong with this idea?
Capt. J Parker:
Gary Johnson made his viewpoint quite clear in this April 2016 debate:
Interviewer: “So the Jewish baker SHOULD have to bake the cake for the Nazi wedding?”
Johnson: “That would be my contention, yes.”
http://independentpoliticalreport.com/2016/04/gary-johnson-jewish-bakers-should-be-forced-to-bake-nazi-cakes/
Decorating the cake with swastikas may transgress different rules. One of the original cases it as made clear by the court that there was no issue of altering thew cake in any way.
Ultimately you either allow anyone, including bigots, to sell to whoever they like, or you restrict that freedom. If you are going to restrict that freedom, you are then just arguing about the price.
There’s probably an opportunity for an online marketplace where the buyer for a custom project describes what they want, and the vendors have the opportunity to bid on delivering that.
1. I won’t argue religion on the internet but I think the fact that Bob Murphy turned 40 the same year I turned 65 proves there really is a God.
2. Since I turned 65, I no longer have any opinions.
3. I’ve been traumatized since I realized that Vox Day and Lord Keynes appear to agree on many many things.
4. Roger Barris was repeatedly bashing Vox Day in the Tom Woods Show comments to the Vox Day/Murphy debate. I then realized that Barris has a blog and I found him critiquing Tom Woods on the Gary Johnson “matter”. Personally, I have no opinions. Other than “Keynesians Always Lie”. I’ve been reading Wenzel and I claim intellectual property rights in that slogan.
http://www.economicmanblog.com/2016/06/07/tom-woods-is-dead-wrong-about-the-libertarian-party/
You managed to have opinions that long? I haven’t had any opinions since my wedding day. 😉
Read it. All I got was
“Johnson is such a better candidate than Hillary and Trump and he’s totally going to get elected!!!”
Not happening. Johnson is nearly as unprincipled as Hillary and Trump are.
http://redalertpolitics.com/2016/08/04/gary-johnson-endorses-blacklivesmatter/
“Hillary Clinton is a wonderful public servant.”
-Gary Johnson
Yeah, this clown is totally worthy of 1,000 word essays in his defense.
“I’ve been traumatized since I realized that Vox Day and Lord Keynes appear to agree on many many things.”
??? Vox Day’s critique of Murphy on free trade doesn’t go far enough:
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/08/robert-murphys-debate-on-free-trade.html
The problem with the Vox Day/Murphy debate was equating “free trade” with “free movement of labor” as in the EU which certainly has nothing to do with AnCap or libertarianism. Vox Day is obsessed with preserving a cultural (and maybe racial) nation which is undermined (he claims) by EU style “free movement of labor”. If that is his highest goal, it seems to me that he can accomplish it under AnCap (and opponents of his plans can simply live in a different community).
Under AnCap, the number and identity of immigrants that would be allowed anywhere is for the owners to decide with their special localized Hayekian knowledge. The same goes for goods and services. Local areas could decide that they want to keep on making a product that cannot really compete on price with some “foreign” made product so they ban the new product from their private area so that they can keep on making it. The alleged benefits of banning the new product are for them to decide. Is that “free trade”? It is obviously Rothbardian AnCap.
I again go back to “POLITICS IN PLURAL SOCIETIES – A Theory of Democratic Instability” by Alvin Rabushka and Kenneth A. Shepsle from 1972. The book is free online:
http://web.stanford.edu/~rabushka/politics%20in%20plural%20societies.pdf
I first read this book in conjunction with Rothbard’s “Power and Market”. The thesis of the book is that multi-ethnic democracies invariably result in ethnic conflict and often in ethnic slaughter. Always always always. The only exception would be if there were fewer “public goods” being controlled by the government. Otherwise, the largest ethnic group will win the election and in a democratic socialist government, they will control most of the assets of the society. AND THEY ALWAYS VOTE ETHNIC. And reward ethnic. It also seems to me that people do not tend to buy ethnic, but buy the best and cheapest products.
The one thing we can be sure of is that a multi-ethnic multi-tribal social democracy will tend towards ethnic strife. Does anyone really want a social democratic government making decisions about who can buy and make what?
“Under AnCap, the number and identity of immigrants that would be allowed anywhere is for the owners to decide with their special localized Hayekian knowledge. “
lol.. In other words, by the real friggin’ owners of any capitalist state: the transnational corporations and Big Business, who will flood the country with Third world immigrants.
Thanks for telling us how ancapistan means national demographic and cultural suicide.
No, even the small mom and pop capital owners are real capital owners.
Big business did not flood Europe with rapists and murderers. The EU state did.
Cognitive dissonance much?
And government at the moment is influenced to a great extent by Big Business, as opposed to the past in which these institutions were kept in check by national governments.
““Theoretically bankrupt, the left-libertarian open border stance can be understood only psychologically. One source can be found in the Randian upbringing of many left-libertarians. Big businessmen-entrepreneurs are portrayed as ‘heroes’ and, according to Ayn Rand in one of her more ridiculous statements, are viewed as the welfare state’s ‘most severely persecuted minority.’ In this view (and untainted by any historical knowledge or experience), what can possibly be wrong with a businessman hiring an immigrant worker? In fact, as every historian knows, big businessmen are among the worst sinners against private property rights and the law of the market. Among other things, in an unholy alliance with the central State they have acquired the privilege of importing immigrant workers at other people’s expense (just as they have acquired the privilege of exporting capital to other countries and being bailed out by taxpayers and the military when such investments turn sour).” (Hoppe 2002: 92–93, n. 23).
——
Cognitive dissonance much, Major_Crackpot?
“And government at the moment is influenced to a great extent by Big Business, as opposed to the past”
Lol, you mean when government expands, when therefore government privilege, subsidies and protection expands, at the behest of primarily progressives and liberals, where politicians with newfound powers put up those powers for sale as they always have done, there is more of it bought?
Oh yes do tell us more Mr. Massive Cognitive Dissonance.
And the quote from Hoppe disproves your claim and is entirely consistent with what I said.
Did you read this part:
“Among other things, in an unholy alliance with the central State they have acquired the privilege of importing immigrant workers at other people’s expense.”
The central state to Hoppe is the core problem, not business as such. You are misrepresenting Hoppe.
National governments, for all their faults, are the only effective barrier to, and serious check on, the power of private multinational corporations and big business. Hoppe’s desire to abolish the state would effectively leave the private corporate tyrannies – with their massive concentrations of capital, wealth and power – as the de facto government of advanced industrial societies.
Without government to protect them, I doubt any multinational corporations would exist. Sure they can have a massive bank balance, but if that’s all in fiat currency and without government to force people to accept that currency the bank balance is kind of meaningless.
In such a scenario, the corporate would need to attempt to become its own government (i.e. join the market in violence) with private security, and territory and borders. They will have difficulty attempting to achieve that on a multinational basis. Physical security is practically impossible in a highly physically distributed structure, for the obvious reason that your perimeter to guard grows much more rapidly than your resources.
That’s the whole reason why nations exist in the first place, any why they are the shape they are (i.e. roughly circular, give or take geography).
Also, a corporate attempting to become a city state or a nation state quickly runs into that same problems of central planning that governments have. It would be devolution of the price system and division of labour (listen to Peter Klein on the limits of corporations).
“National governments, for all their faults, are the only effective barrier to, and serious check on, the power of private multinational corporations and big business.”
No, that is a myth. National governments are the primary enablers of corporations engaging in anti-market behavior. The growth in government has been the single biggest factor in “corporate power”. You have history and political science exactly backwards as usual.
More state power does not destroy power. It exacerbates it.
The claim that big business controls and will control everything and everyone under laissez faire is baseless. The fact that big business can be eviscerated by foreign goods shows that.
“The Triumph of Conservatism” by Gabriel Kolko (which I have owned since 1973) shows that the “Robber Barron” era resulted in the “monopolists” being unable to monopolize the market and requiring government regulation to do the trick. From the comments:
No book details the historical relationship between big business and the Federal government better than this one. Though confined merely to the so-called Progressive Era in American history (1901-1914), Kolko manages to overturn all the misconceptions about the formation of government regulation in America. Instead of accepting the standard view that federal regulation of business was inspired by the Progressive intellectuals and activist political leaders eager to put a check on the rising power of big business, Kolko shows that it was really inspired by the drive of businessman to limit competition and bring “stability” into the market. The result is what Kolko calls, appropriately enough, “political capitalism.”
http://tinyurl.com/h6fvjha
Ditto for the minimum wage law. Contrary to progressive myth, it was not to benefit the working class against greedy capitalists, it was inspired by unions to limit competition from other workers. To price out lower cost labor by government law.
History would suggest that hating, as they do, high wages, labour rights and the cost of first world labour, they would happily bring in millions of cheap, foreign and easily exploitable labour from the Third World even in Hoppe’s libertarian world, which would also bring about the catastrophe Hoppe predicts.
No, private corporations cannot “bring in” cheap labor. Only if the current owners of the houses are willing to sell, can anyone buy.
The EU state is the institution bringing in the flood of immigrants. They are subsidizing this.
With a free market on the other hand, wage rates will already be low enough by having taken into account potential competition. Individuals in a free market do not just wait decades and decades, paying relatively higher prices for domestic labor, only to then suddenly and with capriciousness replace that labor with millions of immigrants at lower wage rates. You are just clueless about the immigration flows that are entirely dictated by states, and then blaming capitalism for this.
Capitalists did not suddenly flood the world with Chinese immigrant workers for example. No, the Chinese government after literally centuries of isolation and immigration/emigration barriers, liberalized the laws and that finally did what would have happened gradually over the centuries, which is a balancing of any gradual increase in Chinese population growth with the world labor market. The reason you don’t hear about floods of Irish workers or floods of German workers, is because those countries liberalized far earlier and the attenuation was not perceptible on the world stage.
In actual capitalism, the entire world labor market is on an equal legal playing field for jobs all over the world. There would not be any sudden “millions of cheap workers” flooding any market, by virtue of market forces of consumer preferences. Employers will have already been able to buy labor from any part of the world, and instead of local workers having artificially higher nominal wage rates because of state barriers, there would have already been a gradual assimilation of workers as they choose to immigrate as individuals.
What is tragic is that you are seeing the results of state intervention in free markets, you are seeing the problems, and yet in your socialist ideology you always blame private ownership of the means of production.
hahaha.
You say “private corporations cannot “bring in” cheap labor”, but then you say that, yes, “Employers will have already been able to buy labor from any part of the world” — completely contradicting and refuting yourself.
Bravo. You are one f*cking seriously schizophrenic dude.
History does not “suggest” any economic theory. You have started with a theory, in your case anti-capitalism, and then you interpret history through that theory.
I look at the exact same history as you do and identify the problem as aggression, particularly but not limited to state aggression, not private ownership of the means of production.
You are now a full fledged anti-capitalist demagogue LK. Did reading Marx warp your mind so much that you unintentionally have become a believer in it?
And you’re a full fledged schizophrenic, incapable of posting here without refuting yourself.
Pretty soon people like you will probably follow a lot of the other libertarian loonies and become a fully sledged Alt Right fascist.
“Thanks for telling us how ancapistan means national demographic and cultural suicide.”
Please explain how a series of Vox Day Brand™ private communities* with private roads, schools, and churches, where even visitors are vetted, will lead to “demographic and cultural suicide”.
*Designed by Trump© pursuant to Vox Day philosophy
Because once the national borders are gone, there will be tidal wave of immigration from the Third world and wealthy buyers too. Corporations will happily bring in millions and fire American workers.
Your pathetic gated communities will be tiny islands in a sea of Third world poverty, crime and social breakdown.
And that’s because a program of the strict protection of private property will result in a complete breakdown of private property protections.
Snow is hot, the sky is brown
And you can stand while sitting down.
I never applied to the Lakers, to be sure, but when I was younger I’d send applications to all sorts of high-paying jobs I wasn’t remotely qualified for — university president and whatnot — just because “you never know.” Then I got a bit older and discovered that, yes, often you *do* know.
Very tempting to think that you method might have actually worked for at least a few of the university administrators I’ve bumped into over the years.
but muh WEED bro!!!!
He has been working on improving his answer to the cake question lately, arguing that he wants to strike a balance that protects both religious freedom and discrimination against minorities. Laws that claim to promote religious freedom, could be thinly disguised attempts to curtail the liberty of others. Having said that, in principle I don’t think he’s got it right on this one. Imo privately owned small businesses should be free to deny service to whoever they want, whether their motives are noble or contemptible. That’s a fine principle I suppose, but it can have hurtful consequences. A friend of mine told me the story of standing in line with his children for ice cream in Florida in the 1960s. The kids in front of his family were black and when It came there turn the guy in the truck told them rudely, “I don’t serve Negros.” Those little kids walked away sadly and he had a hard time explaining to his own children what they had witnessed. I remember going to use the bathroom at a gas station when I was a kid and there were three doors: “men”, “women” and “colored.” I was growing up in the segregated South so I was used to separate bathrooms, but I didn’t seem right to me that colored men and women had to use the same bathroom. Bottom line for me is that if we allow businesses the freedom to discriminate, then we as individuals have to have the integrity and moral character to refuse to do business with them in return. In any event, I can understand why Johnson isn’t drawing a bright line here. I don’t find his position on this disqualifying and, for what it’s worth, he will likely have my humble vote.
Bill, I thought the “separate but equal” rule meant that the provision had to be at least nominally equal. Am I wrong here, or should the gas station have provided different rest rooms for colored men and women, but the rule was just ignored?
I’m certain that Gary Johnson’s big concern is the lack of work these days for attorneys. His ideas could lead to the establishment of entire government bureaucracies at all levels of government to police the serious problem of cake discrimination. New executive agencies will require new law school graduates to write voluminous regulations (that have the force of legislation written by actual elected representatives!) The hiring of new administrative law judges will be required (including hiring staff and building new office space to house them). Really, only an Austrian fringe nutjob would deny that these new rules and regulations would stimulate hiring and the building of new office space while solving the very real and serious social problem of cake discrimination.
Can a Keynesian sue an expert Austrian School cake whiz if he refuses to put Keynes’ ugly face on a cake?
http://i3.getbucks.co.uk/incoming/article9764757.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Pug.jpg
I do not think the question is serious, but the cake vendor has freedom of expression and cannot be forced to decorate the cake in any particular manner. Thus he can refuse to put swastikas or “I hate Niggers and Jews” on a cake. This is a different situation from whether he delivers or provides a cake to a group or individual of which he disapproves.
In what way is it different? I’m failing to see how “decorating a cake” is fundamentally different from “baking a cake” for our purposes. At first I thought the issue might just be the presence or absence of actual literal words, but then you mentioned swastikas, and now I’m confused again. What is the argument in favor of compelling me to bake a cake but not compelling me to put swastikas on it?
It is whether or not it comes under freedom of speech protections. Freedom of speech also covers freedom of expression. You cannot be compelled to convey someone else’s message. So you are allowed not to sell a cake of a particular design, but you are not allowed to simply refuse to bake a generic cake of non specified design for discrimination protected groups.
But that’s clearly nonsensical, yes? There’s no non-arbitrary means of distinguishing things that “convey someone else’s message” from things that don’t. A wedding cake — whether or not it has actual words written on it — surely can be alleged to convey the message “this is a wedding ceremony,” can it not?
More to the point, the people you contend should be forced to bake this cake do themselves believe it conveys that message. That is, in fact, their entire objection to it! What happened to their freedom of expression?
I should have asked: Should a Keynesian be able to sue an expert Austrian School cake whiz if he refuses to put Keynes’ ugly face on a cake? I could have looked up the hare brained Colorado court opinion myself.
Suing is a form of the initiation of force, an especially heinous form because the intended outcome is for a SWAT team to seize the property of the victim. Refusing to enter into a contract with someone is not the initiation of force nor a breach of a pre-existing duty to a stranger. I remain utterly perplexed how that can be the basis for a cause of action absent a pre-existing contractual relationship. Private community bylaws could create such relationships.
I’ve been a libertarian since 1973. Are we hiding the NAP? Will there come a time when our presidential candidate understands the NAP and is brave enough to express it in public?
Why the violence, Gary?
Bob is in the “I’m going to write in my cats, but more likely I’m just going to stay home and complain on the Internet” camp.
https://youtu.be/-lmPr8UfvR0
LK to Major Freedom: Bravo. You are one f*cking seriously schizophrenic dude…. And you’re a full fledged schizophrenic, incapable of posting here without refuting yourself. Pretty soon people like you will probably follow a lot of the other libertarian loonies and become a fully sledged Alt Right fascist.
LK to us: (14) at the same time, do you also hate those crazy libertarians, anarcho-capitalist nutjobs and conservative neoliberal vandals?
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com/2016/07/sick-of-neoliberal-left-and-regressive.html
This from the guy who still can’t comprehend economic calculation or locate that special event in history where the market failed and required Keynesian “stimulus”.
And then there’s this:
Benny Lava
6. August 2016 at 18:42
So Major Freedumb thinks romantic relationships are the exact same thing as a commercial transaction? How very telling. You must be very LONELY.
A lot of Ron Paul libertarians have become Alt Right neofascists:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvUDVyySzQo
—-
Does the truth hurt?
I don’t know if I should LOL or cry. “Lord Keynes”, you have sunk to a new low. Pitiful.
Greg Johnson: Libertarianism is the politics of individualism. Individualism is both a metaphysical and a moral position.
Metaphysical individualism is the thesis that only particular men exist. Groups are just collections of individuals, with no independent reality or meaning……
[N]ationalism, patriotism, and any other form of partiality for one’s ingroup over an outgroup is morally illegitimate, since there is really no us and them, just me and you. This leads us to the ethical dimension of individualism. How do you and I get on together? If groups are just collections of individuals, there are no group values, just individual values. The purpose of social institutions, therefore, is to facilitate individuals pursuing their own aims…..
It is interesting that the most important founder of modern race- and nation-blind individualism was Ayn Rand, born Alissa Rosenbaum, and the leadership of her Objectivist movement just happened to be overwhelmingly Jewish, including a number of first cousins and married couples. Obviously, this was not individualist meritocracy in action. Yet Rand’s followers were blind to this fact as a matter of high moral principle.
There will never be a libertarian society. But libertarian ideology still performs a function within the existing system. AND ALTHOUGH LIBERTARIANISM IS SUPERFICIALLY OPPOSED TO THE MARXISM OF THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL, BOTH ARE JEWISH INTELLECTUAL MOVEMENTS THAT PERFORM THE SAME FUNCTION: THEY BREAK DOWN THE RESISTANCE OF HIGH-TRUST, EUROPEAN INDIVIDUALIST SOCIETIES TO DUPLICITOUS TRIBAL GROUPS—WHAT JOHN ROBB CALLS “PARASITE TRIBES”—PREEMINENTLY JEWS. LIBERTARIANS PREACH INDIVIDUALISM, WHEREAS THE FRANKFURT SCHOOL STIGMATIZES WHITE ETHNOCENTRISM AND EXTOLS “INCLUSIVENESS” TOWARD “MARGINALIZED” GROUPS. BUT THE RESULT IS THE SAME. BOTH DOCTRINES PROMOTE JEWISH UPWARD MOBILITY AND COLLECTIVE POWER WHILE BLINDING THE REST OF SOCIETY TO WHAT IS HAPPENING.
What kind of people preach blindness as a virtue? People who are up to no good.
http://www.counter-currents.com/2015/10/the-refutation-of-libertarianism/
That’s a fascinating article. At first glance I thought the author was Gary Johnson because he is the topic of this thread, but now I see it is Greg Johnson… not sure if there’s any relationship.
I think he is wrong on a number of points, but anyway it’s a topic worthy of discussion, because various arguments do come up about the concept of collective ownership of property (i.e. club goods).
OK, the great cry of the British Tory institution was, “God, Queen and Country” but NONE of those are individualist. Every one is an appeal to a collective concept in one way or another.
Although the 18th and 19th Century colonists had some individualist aspects to them, they certainly were not even remotely Randian in their outlook. Nor was there anything “dishonest” about this strategy, they were proud of it and very happy to encourage others to get involved.
The speech and argument are pathetic and false. There is no reason under AnCap that people cannot live in a collective community and share whatever it is they want to share. 40% of the population could engage in voluntary Keynesianism with fiat funny money if they chose. Libertarianism is nothing more than the prohibition on the initiation of force.
The End.
Naturally, all of us Rothbardians are and have always been blind to the strange ways of the Randians. As I recall, I received a free copy of “The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult” by Murray N. Rothbard in magazine form back in 1987 as a bonus for subscribing to the first issue of Liberty magazine.
http://archive.lewrockwell.com/rothbard/rothbard23.html
No fact or truth ever matters to a Keynesian.
And yet a vote for GJ becomes an incentive for the GOP and the Democrats to move at least a smidge in the right direction in hopes of snagging it next time.
Imagine say Trump loses narrowly but GJ gets 12%. Do Republicans respond to incentives?