Guns

[Renton]

You're quick with the butthurt.

I'm not quick with the butthurt. It's been your debate strategy time and again to insult the intelligence of the other without providing an according retort of his point, and it's become tiresome. You keep acting like I'm the one with the brittle and unbending belief system when your's is cast iron.

You are essentially claiming that the complete restructuring of society is the most reasonable solution. Fantastic claims require fantastic evidence, and libertarian theoretical talking points are not that. You are rightfully frustrated with the flaws of our current system, but this frustration has rendered you blind to all the drawbacks and potential cobra effects of the solutions proposed by the ideology you've adopted.

Further and again, I will ask whether less government is always the solution, or if there are circumstances where it would be detrimental? Supposing Libertopia is the winning ticket, is it really to be assumed that the transition to Libertopia will see a progressively better world the further we get along? For example, let's retire all police forces tomorrow. We have less government, but are we better off? How do we taper down until it's gone?

My point is, the complexity of the undertaking is immense and daunting, so instead of figuring that out you just rail against the evils of government and claim if we dismantle government the invisible hand will guide us to salvation. This is unsubstantive rhetoric, and if you weren't raging so hard you might see that it doesn't deserve much more than a five word pejorative remark.

I've always argued the anti-government side while being in favor of incremental change, not a complete restructuring. You may note that at the start of this I said that American society would be "much better off" without the cops. That doesn't mean I'm not in favor of a police force, it just means the current situation is so abysmal that the alternative of no cops at all would be merely less abysmal, a net positive but still a bad situation. Am I in favor of reform? Of course. Any improvement would be better. To me the easiest improvement in every case is a contraction of the duties/responsibilities/powers of the state. It's curious that you invoked the cobra effect, nearly every government endeavor does harm to the very issue it means to remedy.

As far as providing evidence to support my unsubstantive/fantastic/Libertopian claims, I've done nothing but to do that. I've provided examples on top of examples in this thread and others of how nearly everything the state does is harmful. It is you who has countered each of my reasoned critiques time and again with flippant dismissal and very little actual retort. The other statists like coccobill who have responded to my points have at least done so with according courtesy and that's the reason I even bother with these threads. I enjoy puzzling out the strengths and weaknesses of the other side and, believe it or not, I question the libertarian argument constantly.

[boost]

I'm not quick with the butthurt. It's been your debate strategy time and again to insult the intelligence of the other without providing an according retort of his point, and it's become tiresome. You keep acting like I'm the one with the brittle and unbending belief system when your's is cast iron.

Do you believe hand waving is a phrase which represents a tactic used in discussion? If so, can you understand why I took your post as hand waving? If so, why would you expect me to respond with more than I did? I don't see any semblance of an insult in calling out an intentionally or unintentionally dishonest tactic. If you think I'm wrong, sure, say so, but here you are, elevating your post to scholarly work, reducing my brief by honest critique to an insult, and topping it off by calling me a petulant 9 year old.

Anyways, I really didn't intend any insult, and I am aware that I tend to come across in not the best light in these discussions. Maybe part of it is that my history of posts tend to color the tone of my current ones, and that tends to lead the discussion down this path. I'm not sure-- I really don't think I brought that to this thread, but clearly it is something I need to be hyper aware of if I'm going to continue posting in these threads.

[Renton]

and topping it off by calling me a petulant 9 year old.

I'll apologize right away for this one. I intended it to come across that I'd like what I have to say to be taken seriously, not peevishly mocked.

You came in this thread right away with the insults, calling me and wufwugy retards, then dismissing everything I had to say out of hand. I don't know why my explanation of the apartment scenario was handwaving, but I'm sure you'll be sure not to explain to me why.