If anyone wants to talk about the debates, or anything else vaguely political, have at it here!
Also, I’m not exactly sure why someone wanted to make wax Romney and Obama heads, but I figured I’d put these up in case any of you were ever wondering what that would look like.
Fair share of the twinkie ration? That sounds like communism!
According to the principles of enlightened self interest, shouldn’t one of them seize the entire snack cake supply at the very beginning and then sell them at a handsome profit to their compatriots? After all, if John Galt made Dagney Taggert pay for her own lodging, some dudes should definitely have to foot the bill for their individual Butterscotch Crimpets.
Hey Fitzy, so how did your son fare with the rest of the debate?
I can see it devolving into a civil war. Y’know, when the barter economy they set up collides with their near-constant butthurt.
“But yesterday you said I could have an eclair for a plain flapjack, now why do they gotta be chocolate-coated?” *punch thrown*
Y’know, the guys on Galt island might make it if they had Miles Standish type character to insist upon things like “If you don’t work, you don’t eat.”* But since that would require everyone toiling for the common good, they would probably accuse him of encouraging collectivism and stifling free enterprise, and send him afloat on a raft lashed together from extra copies of “The Virtue of Selfishness.”
*Extra funny, because in the abstract that’s exactly the kind of thing Libertarians are all about.
@ Blitzgal – He passed out while Romney was explaining his stance on Social Security. I think he precociously knows what horse excrement he should ignore.
@Fitzy Yeah, I never understood the ‘YOU COULD HAVE ABORTED THE FOUNDER OF A CURE FOR CANCER’ argument. I mean, they could have also aborted the next Hitler. Or not got pregnant with the founder of the cure for cancer because they were breastfeeding another child. Or they had so many children that they couldn’t afford to send their potential curer of cancer to university. Or not been the curer for cancer because they were busy stood in the kitchen pushing babies out in between roast dinners.
I mean like if you could give me 100% proof that a certain embryo, which could only use my womb, would cure all cancers and gave me a stipend to feed/clothe/house/educate it, I’d let out my womb for nine months for sure. But that’s not a thing.
Also I’m sure that conservatives would think that any child I birthed and raised with my values was the antichrist anyway, so I’m not sure why they get so fussy about people they don’t like having abortions, and since ‘people they don’t like’ includes everyone who’d have an abortion, yeah…
Galt Island would go all lord of the flies the moment someone has to poop, because you just know they won’t have thought of a sewage system, and none of them want to do any cleaning up. They’d be buried in their own crap in no time.
Are we sure they’d even be able to crap at all? I mean, what’s the chances that they’d be getting enough fibre in their diets (or have a decent varied diet at all for that matter)?
By the way, does that Obama wax head remind anyone else of David Letterman or is it just me?
*what’re
Must spend.. entire new post.. to correct typo..
@Shade
Well, considering they’d run out of food supplies in like the first few days, it would depend on the natural vegetation of the island. Mind you, by that time they would have already polluted the island to such a degree that they’d have to choose between starving and eating polluted plants.
So, I realize I’m late to this, but Diogenes said:
You mean kind of like how you throw around the word statist?
I kid, I kid! Gary Johnson is in favour of repealing universal health care, gutting schools, weakening unions, and generally fucking over poor and working class people. Because minority communities, especially black and Hispanic communities, are disproportionately poor relative the general population, maintaining a system which fucks over the poor also helps maintain the current system of white supremacy.
Now, Johnson might not realize that his wack-ass economic policies are also contributing to a system of racial oppression, but it doesn’t really matter whether he’s intentionally racist or just too stupid to realize he’s racist.
To his credit, ending the war on drugs and pulling out of our wars are both big steps towards ending the racial oppressions caused by those policies. But you don’t get a pass on all your racist policies because some of your policies aren’t racist.
(inb4 ISN’T OBAMA THE REAL RACIST)
Also, I’d like to give a belated round of applause to TheNatFantastic. Anarcho-communist Randroid-beatdown high-five!
(Coincidentally, the name of my new post-punk synth band.)
Also also, lowquacks, this:
made me sporfle.
Yeah, Obama = David Letterman and Romney = Arnold Schwarzenegger.
Dudes, get your government to pay for your health care already. Seriously, it rocks.
ttf I’m TRYING ;_;
*lol* This reminds me of a comic by Swedish artist Liv Strömqvist. It’s about two members of the Moderate Party (despite the name, the most right-wing of the Swedish parties) who ends up on a desert island. They’re called Lubby and Pupp. On the island are trees, and in the water there’s fish.
Now, what do they do? Do they cut down some trees, build a hut, do some fishing, and then relax? No. Lubby comes up with a super business idea! He poisons the ocean, so that a mountain of dead fish floats up!
Since there’s no more fish in the ocean, Pupp can only survive by selling his work to Lubby. Pupp is employed by Lubby as a hut builder, and payed in dead fish. In order to earn the fish he needs to survive, Pupp has to build more and more huts. Eventually, Lubby has 23 huts. Lubby switches hut every night, while Pupp sleeps outdoors, since he doesn’t earn enough fish on his hut building job to pay rent to Lubby.
Pupp tries to point out to Lubby that they’re soon gonna die, since they’re gonna run out of fish eventually. There’s no more fish in the ocean since Lubby poisoned it, and Lubby’s big pile of dead fish is eventually gonna be finished. Lubby gets pissed off and shouts and Pupp that he should be grateful that he’s got a job.
Eventually Pupp has built huts of every tree on the island. Pupp becomes unemployed. Lubby graciously keeps supplying him with fish, although only a few bits a day – if he’d get as much fish as before he’d just get lazy. Pupp has to spend his days looking for a new job on the island, and work on his CV in order to get more “employable”.
Because Lubby only gives Pupp the tiniest bits of fish, Pupp eventually starves to death. Some time after this, Lubby runs out of fish and starts starving too. Lubby tries to come up with new business ideas, like making food out of sand. It doesn’t work. Lubby dies too.
The end.
Diogenes, if you’re still here: you cannot be anti-regulation and pro-freedom.
Do you think your hypothetical Mormon guy’s two wives are “free”? Are the underpaid, overworked laborers working for the deregulated corporations “free”? Are the black folks who can’t get jobs while they wait for the Free Market Fairy to tank the racist employers “free”?
Libertarian “freedom” means “freedom to claw my way to the top of the pile on the backs of others”. It means “as long as I’m free, screw everyone else”. Fuck your selfish, bullshit “freedom”.
If “big government” and taxes are the price I pay for OSHA, non-discrimination laws, college loans, and human goddamn rights, I’ll gladly pay that price.
@Dvarghundspossen
Somewhere, a Randroid is stroking their chin and thinking “but if they’d had a third person, and GOLD…”
Like Amanda Marcotte has pointed out in the past, the show Deadwood illustrates the hard reality of a libertarian’s paradise. A couple of assholes are still running the show, while most people do without. Problem is, your basic libertarian fancies himself a Swearingen instead of understanding that in the real world, he is far more likely to be one of the nameless prostitutes, or MAYBE Wu (who has some limited power among his own people but who still has to use the back door of the saloon and is treated like garbage by the guys in charge).
Seconding bannation time for troofy.
I once had a conversation with one of these glibertarian types who swore up and down he would be willing to die if he could not afford medical treatment. If he had cancer, nope, just let the cancer eat him up. Car accident? Same even if his leg was smashed to smithereens.
I really could not believe he would because from what I understand, both of those situations are incredibly painful. And most people would be demanding he take something if for no other reason than to shut up because he would be screaming in pain most of the time.
It’s no coincidence that the people most likely to support an environment where no rules exist to prevent those with power from shitting all over those without are the people most empowered by the current system.
Yeah, Libertarians are so used to being top of the pile that they can’t fathom the idea of not being as privileged as they are.
Every few months Tories and right-wing papers try to campaign to scrap the Human Rights Act because of some hyperbolic, sensationalised story about someone (usually a prisoner or asylum seeker) using it to get something they think isn’t fair*. I won’t do my long boring law-graduate speech about how they don’t actually understand what the HRA does, how it works and the fact that it would be nigh-on impossible to scrap due to various treaties and suchlike, but what I really don’t understand is how in the very next issue of the paper, they will be HORRIFIED about the treatment of a white, middle-class person at the hands of the police.
WHAT DO THEY THINK WILL HAPPEN IF THERE’S NO GUARANTEED RIGHTS AGAINST THESE THINGS?!
(*The Home Secretary (person basically in charge of criminal justice and asylum) last year claimed publicly that an asylum seeker had been granted leave to remain “and I am not making this up… because he has a cat”. She was making it up. The fact that him and his fiancee had been living together for five years and had property together including a pet was evidence in his favour. The story had been reported that way by a right-wing paper over a year before and debunked within a day. She’s never admitted she was wrong.)