Another link

[pecunium]

Liberal Tough Guy dotcom

Forget the picture of the Quad .50 (which is cool, in a gun-geek kind of way) and read the text.

I've no beef with social Liberalism but economic Liberalism is True Liberalism and must come first. I'll put it to ya like this: what some Mexican-American janitor needs is to be paid $25 an hour, not to have bi-lingual education for his kids or a translator at the Secretary of State's office. Get the money and the rest will follow.

There is a lot of truth to that.

Comments

[averros.livejournal.com]

Sorry, I don't care mush about Bush - I'm a libertarian. Democrats are Republicans are nearly indistinguishable in their desire to expand the state as much as they can.

(I'd start with trimming executive salaries and those fat perk packages.)

The companies where those executives work is not your property, so you rightfully have no say in how much they earn. Become a shareholder, then vote for reduction of their pay packages.

In short - mind your own business.

[averros.livejournal.com]

mush -> much, is -> are...

Sigh. I really should do proofreading before posting, sorry.

[allucquere.livejournal.com]

"mind your own business"

Even when they're polluting *my* portion of the environment? (I refer you to the current discussion over on libertarianism.) Not that you asked, but I'm closer to libertarian than I am to any other political party...guess you didn't ASSume that along with everything else.

[averros.livejournal.com]

Ah, joys of demagoguery... The last time I checked, we were talking about janitor's compensation, not about evil polluters. Substituting topic of the discussion when no reasonable arguments are available is one of the most popular tricks in the Demagogue's Manual.

The second popular trick used is, basically, attribution to the opponent of things or thoughts never expressed by the opponent. I do not care about, and my arguments do not depend on, your political affiliation. So there, ASSume yourself to be a good opponent, and don't do that again :)

Finally, for the sake of having fun, I'll go along with your ploy and talk about *your* portion of the environment. Hey, this is *my* portion! Oh, no, this is the evil polluter's portion! Or, well...

Start from the premise that you do not own any portion of environment. If you think you do, find your title to it. Ah, you don't have one?

If you did own some, and some evil polluter mucked it over, you'd have him in court in no time, because you care about your portion of environment. You'd get compensation, too, or cease-and-desist order, as the doctrine of compensation for lowered property value is well established.

Even if damage is small, you (collectively with other property owners) whould still be able to get adequate compensation (and, if the polluter is really evil, put him out of business permanently) by means of class action.

But the reality is, you don't own any, so you're reduced to petitioning the government to do something about it. And the government is composed of bureaucrats who don't own it either, so they care more about "presents" from evil polluters more than they care about the environment. Of course, the concerted action of many environmentalists may annoy and inconvenience the bureaucrats to the point that they concede to some demands. The concessions will be promptly taken back as soon as the annoying protesters go away, though.

So. If you own a portion of the environment, you're merely minding your own business when you protect it. When you don't you're merely annoying other people when you ask for environmental protection. That's why I consider Greenpeace & Co. seriously misguided :)