/liberty/ - Liberty

The "monetary" system, subsidy systems, and intellectual property systems are all super fucked up and strongly favor the already super-rich.

>Why have real wages been stagnant?

Hello, Robert Reich

>computers are more efficient than humans at repetitive menial tasks

>properly-managed AI is less retarded than bean counters at finding federal waste in spending

boom

>>64415

So to make a libertarian country we should have the government automated?

Libertarian beliefs are not subject to verification or falsification on the ground of experience and facts. It's based on faith alone.

>>64441

Here you go, http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/

>>64441

>>64451

Don't forget that the things you can buy these days for the same money are of much lower quality than they used to be, food in particular. Back in the day there was only the real stuff and the price wasn't gouged, now it's all chemical substitutes (and subsequent medical bills) if you're on a tight time and money budget.

>>64459

Beef is beef. A protein molecule is a protein molecule.

Back in the day you had to spend 20-45 minutes cooking your food as well. Virtually no one owned a microwave in the 70s and electric ovens only became efficient in the 80s/90s.

>>64404

you can measure freeness of markets by counting legal acts that restrict markets

>>64462

Antibiotics, hormones, other toxins, garbage in-garbage out nutrition, adding weight with injections, etc.

The world population has doubled since the 70s, do you think nothing had to change to accomodate that?

Things people used to take for granted have become a luxury, and the trend may continue.

>>64451

Thank you. Looks like overall purchasing power is more or less the same (though benefits have increased). This doesn't look good for my interlocutor's case.

>>64459

>Back in the day there was only the real stuff and the price wasn't gouged

If you're talking about HFCS, that's because of corn subsidies and tariffs/price controls on sugar. Other foodstuffs are affected heavily by nutrition science being manipulated by various government departments.

>>64509

>Antibiotics, hormones, other toxins, garbage in-garbage out nutrition, adding weight with injections, etc.

That's largely scaremongering. Sure, it's important to be careful with our use of antibiotics, but let us not forget that they have greatly reduced disease, which is really important for our food supply. Not going to comment much on hormones, but "toxins", really? Did your homeopath clue you in on that one?

>The world population has doubled since the 70s, do you think nothing had to change to accomodate that?

Food production has increased, yes. What's your point? The fact that we're able to produce more nutrients per person than ever before is a bad thing? There's nothing inherently wrong with industrialization. I'll be the first to admit that our industries have some freaky shit going on with them, but the general trend in food production has been one of improved yields, greater nutrition, and less disease. If you want to complain about how interference with the market is affecting our eating habits, I'm on board, but you're making it sound like everyone's eating industrial waste.

>Things people used to take for granted have become a luxury, and the trend may continue.

Overwhelmingly, the things people used to think of as luxuries have become so commonplace that people now take them for granted, rather than the other way around. Everyone's access to information, technology, services, infrastructure, nutrition, and so on has generally improved. Sure, maybe fewer people ride horse-drawn carriages or use sealing wax anymore, but that's hardly a bad thing.

>>64509

I think you're being sensationalist and don't actually understand jack shit about food. What an animal eats can affect the nutritional quality, but the only place this really matters is corn and soy. The only reason that animals eat corn and soy is because we overproduce it to the point where it's ridiculously dirt cheap because of farming subsidies, and if those subsidies didn't exist our animals wouldn't be eating those products in the first place since the farmers wouldn't be able to demand gibs for growing even more of a trash crop. This has nothing to do with "global food production" at large. It's like how people think deforestation is a serious issue in North America when there's more trees than ever before, or how bees are "going extinct" when their populations have actually increased in size over the last decade. It's sensationalist garbage.

>>64438

Not an argument.

We live in a society where people pay a premium to be malnourished and "eat like their ancestors did."

>>64520

lol buthurt

>>64404

Here's some facts for you:

>During the age of absolute monarchism, taxes almost never rose above twenty percent, now the tax rates for the middle-class easily reach fifty

>The gold standard got abolished basically everywhere during the twentieth century

>Most people still believe that Adam Smith is THE laissez-faire thinker, and he's well over two-hundred years old

The narrative that capitalism is reigning supreme is simply false. It doesn't add up. That almost every country nowadays uses it even though seemingly everyone hates it has one simple reason: It works.

>>64438

how can you falsify ethics?

>>64459

>food is lower quality now

False.

-t. chemical engineer

>>64438

The falsification-criterion is only meaningful in the context of empirical sciences. Ethics isn't empirical, economics isn't empirical, history isn't empirical. Not if you're not a retard, that is.

>>64740

Just how new are you? Your comment doesn't express that you disagree with a priori methodologies in the social sciences, but that you have never, in your entire life, heard that they exist.

>>64725

Don't feed your dog peanut butter if it has Xylitol in it, it acts as a poison for them. Don't smell recently opened microwave popcorn daily, or you get popcorn lung like the factory workers do.

It's these edge cases that make food worse, the one person using the product in an unusual but seemingly benign manner can get absolutely fucked.

>>64748

And why sould we get worked up over edge cases?

>>64740

You can always attempt a purely empirical study and testing of economic theory. Not with my money or anyone else's though. We've already had enough such "experiments" for a century.

>>64753

I'm trying to refute that food isn't lower quality; a slightly cheaper product that satisfies the same need as before, but .0001% of customers gets a nasty surprise, is a bit worse. Forces externalities on someone who can't prepare for them and forces safer products out of the market.

>>64756

The FDA hasn't done a single thing about diacetyl compounds in food and still lists them as safe. Meanwhile, some companies have stopped using them of their own initiative.

>.0001%

If anything, that's a highball estimate. The disease goes back to the 50's, yet the first recorded instance of a consumer suffering lung damage was in 2007.