A New Year's gift to all dear Chesstalkers!

[Dilip Panjwani]

https://greekreporter.com/2024/12/31...-philosophers/

[Pargat Perrer]

https://greekreporter.com/2024/12/31...-philosophers/

there's a BIG problem with this post and the person who posted it ....

Dollop Panhandler has been telling us ... over and over again .... that we should in our political system reward the "hard-working and smart" people ... and stop the government from "stealing" the material fruits of their work....

now he posts something which exalts anti-materialism ....

what a total hypocrite!

[Dilip Panjwani]

Libertarianism would thrive in a stoic society, which stresses on the fundamental importance of 'doing no harm to others (except ofcourse in fair competition)', and encourages minimal, if any, interference into other people's affairs, except voluntary co-operation and voluntary charity. The video on Stoicism in the link in my post above, is excellent. The concept of Marxism, which is the opposite of Libertarianism, was too foreign to the wisdom of the ancient Greeks. The desire for equity in a stoic society is best achieved by easy access to capital for all...

[Vlad Drkulec]

I subscribe to a number of Stoic themed newsletters put out by authors of Stoic themed books which I have previously read.

I have some sympathy for Libertarianism but it seems to me that adherents get lost in the weeds sometimes with theoretical ideas and ideals that don't always translate in the real world.

[Vlad Drkulec]

there's a BIG problem with this post and the person who posted it ....

Dollop Panhandler has been telling us ... over and over again .... that we should in our political system reward the "hard-working and smart" people ... and stop the government from "stealing" the material fruits of their work....

now he posts something which exalts anti-materialism ....

what a total hypocrite!

Paul, Paul, Paul, a lot of things have to have gone wrong for you to be reduced to this. Trolling a sub-forum that maybe half a dozen people read. Dilip and Sid are very successful individuals who you attack endlessly.

I often reply on this forum and delete my posts before hitting send because I am heeding the maxim, "Do nothing which is of no use." from the Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi.

Perhaps I should have done it with this post as well. You really need help. Get it.

[Dilip Panjwani]

I subscribe to a number of Stoic themed newsletters put out by authors of Stoic themed books which I have previously read.

I have some sympathy for Libertarianism but it seems to me that adherents get lost in the weeds sometimes with theoretical ideas and ideals that don't always translate in the real world.

Hi Vlad,
The system we currently have enables the so called 'filthy rich' to accumulate unrealistic amounts of wealth, while many, many, others are unable to compete. This is obviously due to the the myriad unnecessary regulations from contradictory, nonsensical laws, and obstacles assessing capital (as well as unfair practices by the top companies to subdue competition), which the filthy rich are able to work with because of their political connections (more accurately, bribery of politicians & bureaucrats). Libertarianism hopes to make widespread competition viable, so that a larger number of companies make smaller profits, there is a greater demand for labor, and the society's total output increases, eliminating inflation.
The other issue is that politicians do not want to let go of the immense power they currently have, and we need a grassroots revolutionary effort to correct that and give the ordinary citizens freedom to lead their lives the way they wish, so long as they do not harm others (except in fair competition), and hence we need our judiciary to ensure enforcement of the Natural Law.
As you have pointed out, it is difficult to implement the above in our real world circumstances today, but as Ayn Rand showed in her writings, it is not impossible...

[Pargat Perrer]

Paul, Paul, Paul, ...

Marcia, Marcia, Marcia .....

a lot of things have to have gone wrong for you to be reduced to this. Trolling a sub-forum that maybe half a dozen people read. Dilip and Sid are very successful individuals who you attack endlessly.

I often reply on this forum and delete my posts before hitting send because I am heeding the maxim, "Do nothing which is of no use." from the Book of Five Rings, by Miyamoto Musashi.

Perhaps I should have done it with this post as well. You really need help. Get it.

What you call "trolling" is actually a rebuttal of ridiculous claims. Is that not allowed in Canada?

There's nothing gone wrong, I am in the prime of my life. Your really have no idea. But you think you do, and so you are totally out of sync with reality.

Try reading these 2 books: "Journey of Souls" and "Destiny of Souls" by Dr. Michael Newton. Maybe ... maybe then you will get it.

There's also a trilogy of books by Neale Donald Walsch ... "Conversations With God" books 1, 2, 3 ....

"Do nothing which is of no use" ... and what is defined as "no use"???

Everything has to be defined before we can ascribe any quality to it ...

Dilip defined right here on CT "fair competition" as "competition without harming others" ... so I leave it to you to fathom the "deep insight" LOL of his Libertarian maxim ....

"Do no harm to other except in fair competition".

In other words, simply "do no harm to others" ..... in which case all kinds of things in our society must disappear overnight in a Libertarian government including use of fossil fuels ...

Of course he doesn't realize that ... yes, he may be successful ... but bright? Uhhhh.... no.

[Dilip Panjwani]

Anybody on chesstalk is brighter than you, for sure. And you don't even like the game of chess... so why are you posting on chesstalk?

[Vlad Drkulec]

What you call "trolling" is actually a rebuttal of ridiculous claims. Is that not allowed in Canada?

There's nothing gone wrong, I am in the prime of my life. Your really have no idea. But you think you do, and so you are totally out of sync with reality.

Try reading these 2 books: "Journey of Souls" and "Destiny of Souls" by Dr. Michael Newton. Maybe ... maybe then you will get it.

I'm sorry but I don't subscribe to these outlandish ideas about life and death and the afterlife and reincarnation. Your doctor is a doctor like Jill Biden is a doctor. He has lectured at a university or college. I have lectured at a university. Many people have. He is a therapist and a hypnotist. Hypnotism has its uses. It also has its dangers including the creation of false memories. It is very foolish to base your life on possibly false memories of others.

There's also a trilogy of books by Neale Donald Walsch ... "Conversations With God" books 1, 2, 3 ....

I have read four or five of his books, most many years ago. They are interesting but not conclusive. We can all have conversations with God. Why don't you ask Him yourself, if you are on the right path?

"Do nothing which is of no use" ... and what is defined as "no use"???

We each need to define that for ourselves. If you do it right, that is one of the secrets to life.

Everything has to be defined before we can ascribe any quality to it ...

Dilip defined right here on CT "fair competition" as "competition without harming others" ... so I leave it to you to fathom the "deep insight" LOL of his Libertarian maxim ....

Libertarianism can be a principled belief. In an ideal world, you wouldn't have to harm others, but in a real world, sometimes you do and you will, however much you try to avoid it. Many of the things that Dilip says are certainly true and largely the tenets of libertarianism are aspirational. I am unaware of any harmful effects of libertarianism unlike the other paradigm popular here of Marxism.

"Do no harm to other except in fair competition".

In other words, simply "do no harm to others" ..... in which case all kinds of things in our society must disappear overnight in a Libertarian government including use of fossil fuels ...

Of course he doesn't realize that ... yes, he may be successful ... but bright? Uhhhh.... no.

Now, you are just being silly and wasting everyone's time. I know you hate people and would like to see many of them voluntarily disappear. To those Malthusians, I say, "You first."

In a former life, I used to engage with some really competent trolls. It was in a make believe world. Some of the people that I argued with later wrote books and achieved a measure of fame or infamy. Some amounted to nothing. They died alone in tragic circumstances. It all faded away after a while. In Chesstalk, I see a faded echo of those days and we have echoes of some of the people that I encountered in those days. One of those trolls would have called your beliefs on the afterlife, magic nose goblins but while he was a good writer, his reality was different than what he portrayed. His world unravelled in a rancid honey trap. Oddly enough one of the other trolls predicted his demise and outlined exactly how it could be accomplished, though when it happened he was surprised that the bait was so tainted. That is a different story perhaps never to be told.

[Dilip Panjwani]

[QUOTE=Vlad Drkulec;n239129]



In an ideal world, you wouldn't have to harm others, but in a real world, sometimes you do and you will, however much you try to avoid it.

Vlad


Vlad, as everyone knows, the outcome of fair competition is that someone ends up getting harmed, and we all accept that (a closer to home example being a fairly played chess tournament, in which the losers miss their chances of winning the prize because of someone who wins the tournament). The issue of harming the environment with one's pursuits is also real from the pollution point of view, and as I have said before, the one smart thing Liberals have done is to enact the Carbon Tax, whereby those who harm the environment compensate for it.
Do you have any other examples of unavoidable harm to others?

[Vlad Drkulec]

[QUOTE=Dilip Panjwani;n239138]

In an ideal world, you wouldn't have to harm others, but in a real world, sometimes you do and you will, however much you try to avoid it.

Vlad

Vlad, as everyone knows, the outcome of fair competition is that someone ends up getting harmed, and we all accept that (a closer to home example being a fairly played chess tournament, in which the losers miss their chances of winning the prize because of someone who wins the tournament). The issue of harming the environment with one's pursuits is also real from the pollution point of view, and as I have said before, the one smart thing Liberals have done is to enact the Carbon Tax, whereby those who harm the environment compensate for it.
Do you have any other examples of unavoidable harm to others?

I am not a fan of carbon taxes as I don't believe that carbon dioxide is the problem that the people who want us to eat bugs while they dine on steak and that fly on private jets while shaming the great unwashed for flying commercial would have us believe.

Technological innovations that wipe out an industry or sometimes just a company would be an example of harming others inevitably.

WordPerfect was a great product for its time but it was overtaken by Microsoft Word and not necessarily because it was the best product. WordPerfect still exists as Word compatible product but everyone uses Word and it is easier to just use Word and pay about one hundred dollars per year to use it, Excel and the associated suite of products on all your devices.

A product that I purchased a few years ago, "Dragon Naturally Speaking" was very interesting. It could transcribe speech or recorded speech. They have a version for medical offices that my brothers are aware of. Microsoft has integrated similar capabilities in its products. Microsoft's product was maybe not quite as good, but it was in effect an extension of its existing product and for most people was free.

Transcription services are a recent example. You can pay $10 USD per month and get a pretty good transcription of any audio or video. I attended a seminar by a number of very high level chess coaches which seemed focused on chess coaches though most of the participants were chess players and there were only about a dozen of them. My cost for the lecture was $40 USD. There were a total of twelve hours of lectures by grandmasters like Shirov, Ramesh, Kaidanov, Shabalov, Christiansen and Hungaski. It was an unbelievably deep and interesting experience and I resolved to transcribe the lectures but then thought about spending the multiples of twelve hours that it would take. I did a web search and found Turboscribe. After testing the free version which would only transcribe half an hour of video, and being satisfied with the transcription, I paid for the full blown subscription and transcribed all of the lectures in a few minutes.

[Dilip Panjwani]

[QUOTE=Vlad Drkulec;n239141]

I am not a fan of carbon taxes as I don't believe that carbon dioxide is the problem that the people who want us to eat bugs while they dine on steak and that fly on private jets while shaming the great unwashed for flying commercial would have us believe.

Technological innovations that wipe out an industry or sometimes just a company would be an example of harming others inevitably.

WordPerfect was a great product for its time but it was overtaken by Microsoft Word and not necessarily because it was the best product. WordPerfect still exists as Word compatible product but everyone uses Word and it is easier to just use Word and pay about one hundred dollars per year to use it, Excel and the associated suite of products on all your devices.

A product that I purchased a few years ago, "Dragon Naturally Speaking" was very interesting. It could transcribe speech or recorded speech. They have a version for medical offices that my brothers are aware of. Microsoft has integrated similar capabilities in its products. Microsoft's product was maybe not quite as good, but it was in effect an extension of its existing product and for most people was free.

Transcription services are a recent example. You can pay $10 USD per month and get a pretty good transcription of any audio or video. I attended a seminar by a number of very high level chess coaches which seemed focused on chess coaches though most of the participants were chess players and there were only about a dozen of them. My cost for the lecture was $40 USD. There were a total of twelve hours of lectures by grandmasters like Shirov, Ramesh, Kaidanov, Shabalov, Christiansen and Hungaski. It was an unbelievably deep and interesting experience and I resolved to transcribe the lectures but then thought about spending the multiples of twelve hours that it would take. I did a web search and found Turboscribe. After testing the free version which would only transcribe half an hour of video, and being satisfied with the transcription, I paid for the full blown subscription and transcribed all of the lectures in a few minutes.

I agree that carbon dioxide may not be relevant, and that is why I mentioned: 'from the pollution point of view', as burning of carbon can lead to pollution.
The other examples you give can all be considered to be extensions of 'fair competition', because by having a stake in the market you automatically expose yourself to fair competition... like Bob A.'s family realized with respect to their bookstore...

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Dilip:

Mega stores are currently "fair competition" as you state.

They successfully and legally, and "fairly?", have put a multitude of well operated small businesses out of business in very many commerce sectors (Like my family's 25 year small bookstore).

Once they have decimated the competition, and have a virtual monopoly, what we see is the low prices, which gave them the edge to win the "fair competition" initially, slowly start to rise.

The consumer then does not have any competitors left to buy from. They MUST pay the rising, inflationary prices.The theory of "competition in the marketplace to keep prices low" has then become a fiction, which the supporters of "fair competition" continue to spout to try to defend their position.

Is this the Libertarian present that is acceptable?

Is this the Libertarian future in still somewhat competitive sectors that is acceptable?



https://www.visualcapitalist.com/wor...oogle_vignette

Bob A

[Dilip Panjwani]

Hey Bob,
You are forgetting that Libertarianism also includes easy access to capital, and so nobody with big bucks would be able to have a competitive edge just because of their big bucks... and competition will thrive, keeping prices low, no fiction there...
There are some inherent advantages to a small sized business also, especially if it can work co-operatively with other small-sized businesses... so everything mega is not necessarily better...

[Bob Armstrong]

Hi Dilip:

"Free Access to Capital"

This is a theoretical part of your modelling. This is not happening under Javier Milei in Argentina.

2nd - we all understand the benefits of scale - large purchasers get larger discounts from suppliers. As long as you allow virtual monopolies, small competitive start ups will fail, unless they can tap into some "niche market". So it seems your model will not work. I think this has been the position here by Pargat Perrer, and others. There is some skepticism that this is functional.

I think that it would take on the ground proof that your Libertarian model is workable in fact.

Bob A