For practical purposes, we have more privacy than ever before in
human history… In short, we have lost the kinds of privacy that no
prudent person loses sleep over.
i just discovered caplan and this guy is entirely off the chain
from the post
History textbooks are full of populist complaints about business: the
evils of Standard Oil, the horrors of New York tenements, the human body
parts in Chicago meatpacking plants. To be honest, I haven’t taken
these complaints seriously since high school. In the absence of
abundant evidence to the contrary, I say the backstory behind these
populist complaints is just neurotic activists searching for dark
linings in the silver clouds of business progress.
most people would concede that packing immigrants into tenements or
processing lithuanian meatpackers into dogfood is probably bad? some
might use the phrase “necessary evil” but they’d still concede it was,
you know, evil
not caplan! mass murder is obviously fine as long as we get facebook
- and also necessary for the creation of facebook, you can’t have
facebook without murder. anyone complaining is a stupid fucking baby.
that’s not a leftist caricature of his position, that’s his actual
position
on one level it’s terrifying that people actually believe this stuff,
but on another level it’s nice to know that these are the best arguments
the right has to offer. we certainly don’t have to worry about being
defeated on the battlefield of ideas. i can’t help but feel that if the
koch brothers hired me for their libertarian think tank at george mason
university i would be able to do a way better job of marketing their
horrible ideology than this guy - i wouldn’t just lean straight into
“murder’s good, actually”
i don't think any of these guys are actually stupid, in the sense that none of them are incapable of processing complex ideas. i think they're all some combination of gullible and evil. caplan seems to me to err more on the evil side. like, i think he just honestly doesn't value human life and is confused about why anyone would
Maybe, but I don't understand how he has a very strong opinion he readily admits he cannot substantiate and has no interest in consulting the kind of sources that *could* substantiate it. And what's worse is his tone suggests he thinks he has delivered a knock-down argument.
I get some solace in seeing that Caplan, the current intellectual heavyweight among libertarians, is getting a whopping 55 likes/14 shares on this tweet.
This is the supposed modern king of libertarianism. And no one even cares.
Reminder that in the 1898 Spanish-American war fewer American soldiers were taken out by the Spanish forces than by the Chicago-supplied preserved meat [made of fuck knows what](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Army_beef_scandal).
“Facebook, Google etc. have been a huge net positive for their users
over the past 15 years.” Not everyone might agree but this is not a very
controversial point to make.
So why the hell would you preface it with “and also everyone who
complained about excesses of capitalism ever was wrong and stupid?”
All the good things that happened are because of corporations.
All the bad things are because of government.
Please take my rational analysis srsly
This honestly makes a lot of sense if you replace “business progress” with “cocaine”
i just discovered caplan and this guy is entirely off the chain
from the post
most people would concede that packing immigrants into tenements or processing lithuanian meatpackers into dogfood is probably bad? some might use the phrase “necessary evil” but they’d still concede it was, you know, evil
not caplan! mass murder is obviously fine as long as we get facebook - and also necessary for the creation of facebook, you can’t have facebook without murder. anyone complaining is a stupid fucking baby. that’s not a leftist caricature of his position, that’s his actual position
on one level it’s terrifying that people actually believe this stuff, but on another level it’s nice to know that these are the best arguments the right has to offer. we certainly don’t have to worry about being defeated on the battlefield of ideas. i can’t help but feel that if the koch brothers hired me for their libertarian think tank at george mason university i would be able to do a way better job of marketing their horrible ideology than this guy - i wouldn’t just lean straight into “murder’s good, actually”
“Facebook, Google etc. have been a huge net positive for their users over the past 15 years.” Not everyone might agree but this is not a very controversial point to make.
So why the hell would you preface it with “and also everyone who complained about excesses of capitalism ever was wrong and stupid?”