What presidential candidate would be most beneficial to the climbing community and land access?

This was the conclusion the last time corporations were allowed to have more power than government. Interestingly, with the recent changes (i.e. Citizens United), corporations again have more power than government. Interestingly, we are again headed in the direction of having robber barons, or the contemporary equivalent.

No telling how things will turn out, but seems like there are a lot of R's that won't support Trump, and a lot of D's that won't support Bernie or Hillary, at least as it stands now...

At least some folks claim this seeming 'pick the loser' choice in the D/R world leaves things open for a 3rd party candidate....

There are also claims that when people are surveyed about what they do or don't want from government, the answers come out closer to the libertarians than to any other party (i.e. a strong desire for less intrusive government in general, lower taxes, etc...)

Given that, it's worth pointing out that one of the candidates for the Libertarian Party Presidential nomination is former Gov. Gary Johnson, who IS a climber - last I heard, he has climbed at least 5 of the 'Seven Sisters' (including Everest) along with lots of smaller peaks...

Never heard any discussion by him about what he would do for climbing community / land access, but at least if someone asks, he will have a clue about what he is talking about...

In the past 3 decades or more, the Democratic party has generally been a far better steward of public lands than the GOP. There are many elements of the GOP that would open up more lands for energy extraction and do not care about wilderness or outdoor recreation. Either Clinton or Sanders would be far better than a Republican president. Trump has given very few specifics on any issue, other than immigration, so it is unclear what he thinks.

Go onto a college campus these days, the nerve center of the modern progressive movement, and try out a little "free speech" that isn't approved by the PC police. Micro aggressions ... free speech zones ... speech codes ... shouting down non PC speakers ... these campuses are microcosms of what the Progressives want to do to the rest of society. Fascistic and totalitarian.

Mike Lane wrote:Socialism itself is when the state assumes control over the means of production.

That's not what socialism is; that is what communism is in practice (not in theory). In a socialist state, a portion of the fruit of people's and businesses' labor is redistributed to the laborers. In an agricultural society, this means the field workers get a portion of the harvest. In modern society, it means businesses get taxed to provide services to the working class.

Pro-Capitalists often romanticize the "hard work" and "labor" that led to the wealth amassed by the "opportunist", but conveniently forget that most of the "hard work" is provided by the working class.

They make the arguments that social welfare programs enable people to be lazy. The socialist responds with an argument that is essentially "just because we have a few bad apple doesn't mean we should cut down the whole tree". This is not an reasonable argument to the capitalist. Ironically though, when the Wall Street crowd made the same argument, the capitalists ate it up.

Todd Graham wrote:Go onto a college campus these days, the nerve center of the modern progressive movement, and try out a little "free speech" that isn't approved by the PC police. Micro aggressions ... free speech zones ... speech codes ... shouting down non PC speakers ... these campuses are microcosms of what the Progressives want to do to the rest of society. Fascistic and totalitarian.

I live on a college campus and say lots of thing that aren't "PC" all the time without any form of social "PC" police doing jack shit about it. Plus, the college and the nearby town would both be considered fairly progressive. But go ahead and make some more inaccurate generalizations why don't you?

eli poss wrote: That's not what socialism is; that is what communism is in practice (not in theory). In a socialist state, a portion of the fruit of people's and businesses' labor is redistributed to the laborers. In an agricultural society, this means the field workers get a portion of the harvest. In modern society, it means businesses get taxed to provide services to the working class. Pro-Capitalists often romanticize the "hard work" and "labor" that led to the wealth amassed by the "opportunist", but conveniently forget that most of the "hard work" is provided by the working class. They make the arguments that social welfare programs enable people to be lazy. The socialist responds with an argument that is essentially "just because we have a few bad apple doesn't mean we should cut down the whole tree". This is not an reasonable argument to the capitalist. Ironically though, when the Wall Street crowd made the same argument, the capitalists ate it up. I live on a college campus and say lots of thing that aren't "PC" all the time without any form of social "PC" police doing jack shit about it. Plus, the college and the nearby town would both be considered fairly progressive. But go ahead and make some more inaccurate generalizations why don't you?

https://www.google.com/search?q=socialism+definition&rlz=1C9BKJA_enUS676US676&oq=socialism&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0j69i59l2j69i60.6360j0j8&hl=en-US&sourceid=chrome-mobile&ie=UTF-8

Simple Google search and on the results page alone every definition says state or collective ownership of the means of production. And you live on a college campus, huh?
Here's the thing. The redistribution you love so much is done at the point of a gun. By men with badges. That never ends well for a people. You are advocating surrendering the rights of the individual to a colossal entity that is ruled by elites.
Libertarianism is a superior system to socialism because in our system, voluntary socialism is perfectly allowed. In a socialist state you can't say free markets are allowed because the state controls the means of production. Any voluntary transactions take place in the form of a black market. And when you engage in unregulated transactions and the state finds you, you get the Eric Garner situation. It is the height of not only irony but utter ignorance that the BLM crowd uses Eric Garner as a reason to increase the power of the state.
This is my last post because in my absence Mountain Project has become tyrannical and I've been timed out. I'm going to try and summarize for the lurkers out there why you need to resist this sudden romanticizing of a paradigm proven in the last century to do nothing but lead to untold human suffering on a scale never seen.

• The Soviet Union, Nazi Germany, North Korea all called themselves a democratic socialist state.
• Socialism always fails because because the state cannot set or determine market value. Only free association can. Why are you socialists seeking to outlaw the natural path and impose an artificial one?
• As Tony Bubb stated way up thread, when individuals are forced to surrender the fruits of their labor, the motivation to push hard ends. I can guarantee that every one of socialists here do not possess the same drive to succeed as most of the people I know who have gone out and started businesses that employ people. I am a contractor, as are most of my friends. Thousands of people are employed by the friends I have in total. None of them feel optimistic about about further government intrusion and property confiscation, a few have already closed their doors, ending jobs.
• If you are so convinced that people need to share more, would you be willing to pick up a gun and go into your neighbors house and take the money directly? Because there really is no difference in letting the state do the exact same thing.
• The notion that reducing the state will lead to some sort of return to corporate feudalism is utterly ridiculous. I'll tell you why. I am actually involved with the Libertarian Party, and I know for a fact that they receive almost nothing in donations from corporations.
• I consider myself a Voluntaryist. Ultimately, we seek a world that is actually stateless. By stateless, I mean there are no more borders. Once we have no more borders to worry about and complete free association, the likelihood of having wars drops massively. So, if advocate strengthening the state, and by extension the power of a border, who benefits from that? The war machine sure does, I'll tell you that. So, if you think that warfare is still one of the most powerful economic influences on the planet, who then is supporting this push for more statism? Y'all are being played. It started with kindergarten and continued throughout you years of public education. Socialism socialism socialism. The bodies of the endless warfare from the 20th century are still warm but your rulers seem to think they have already distracted you to forget the cause.

This ad is demonstrative why socialism is so appealing to the children. As a father of millenials, and a foreman who has trained 100s of apprentices through the years I can tell that this is very much the mindset of most of the youth in this country. When it comes time for me to keep pulling the wagon while you children sit in the back, I'm done. Good luck running a welfare state where production drops to less than half of what is now. You won't hear this from your educators because they do not understand production, entrenuership or free association. If you are an adult and still feel the need to impose the state into the lives of your neighbors, you might want to look into why you hold sociopathic feelings.
Farewell folks.
Live Free
Google Voluntaryism.

I support the concepts of libertarianism, but her is the question that I haven't heard anyone answer. What happens to the free market when there is nothing left, or the system is so broken there are no more checks and balances?

You look at our economic system currently and it is as defined. 99% of the population is spending pretty much their entire income, while the top 1% is spending what? About 10% of their income?

There is no trickle down economics, there is no circulation of money. Wages are stagnate or declining while the income of the 1% is steadily increasing.

So what does a libertarian recommend when the well has run dry and there is no more free market because a small population owns EVERYTHING.

Shall we revolt then?

Wow, a lot to reply to lol. All right here we go:

Tony B wrote: Correct, that's why it is done by population, not by acreage.

If you're talking about the electoral college, that's only half right. Yes, electoral votes are distributed in a pseudo-proportional way according to population. But, it isn't wholly proportional. The entire system is slated well in favor of states with smaller populations. To argue otherwise is simply ignoring fact. A single voter in Wyoming (the lest populous state) has 4x the voting power of one in California (the most populous state). If it were truly proportional, it would not be possible to win the election even if you don't have the popular vote. I am opposed to any system that has this as a possible outcome. I am opposed to any system that gives people unequal voting power. Nobody's vote should be worth more than anyone else's.

If you're talking about representation, its again only half right. The House of Representatives is roughly proportional, but still slated towards smaller states. Case in point, California has 53 representatives, and Wyoming only has one. California's population is 38,800,000. Wyoming's is 585,000. So, each California Congressman represents 732,075 people. So, a person in California has a is represented by 1/732075 of one vote in Congress. Compared to Wyoming, whose lone Congressman represents the whole state. So, someone in Wyoming is represented by 1/585000 of a vote in Congress. This works out to a Wyoming resident having about 25% more representation than a California resident. This is unfair. I think Congress should switch to Mixed Member Proportional Representation and lift the 435 member limit, so as to provide a more equal representation system.

The senate is non-proportional, and never claims to be. Each state gets 2 representatives, regardless of population. This is also unfair, but I'm not sure exactly how I feel about it. My gut tells me it should be abolished, but I think that might be short-sighted. So, I'm not really sure how I feel about this.

Last can scenario- buying the last can is not an act of aggression. Racing the other guy to it still isn't. Knocking him down is. Lying to him that your daughter is deathly ill and needs it is.
What is voluntary and what is coercion? This is a good place to interject a difference most of you folks aren't aware of. A Ayn Rand devotee would use this scenario to describe how bad altruism is and that the self interest of the individual is what moves society further than anything. Randians do not subscribe to the NAP. They are known as Objectivists. I favor Rothbard, who did use the NAP to define his philosophy of Liberty. But he too has some bad ideas, children are property for one. He also went full retard towards the end and thought recruiting Neo Nazis was a good idea (he was Jewish). But I digress. As for your premise as to are you entitled to 100% of your labor. Yes, you are. Because to agree to let the state take a portion of the product of your labor by threat of violence, you then allow the state at least partial ownership of you. No one disputes that roads and bridges and fire engines are good things and necessary to acquiring wealth. The question then becomes how do accommodate for those things. We say that to do so voluntarily through free association as a principle will lead to synergetically better results. But it will also take a lot of work, and the obstacles are enormous. Especially if you consider the greater the amount of wealth in a society the less the need for the state. Which then implies that there is no motivation for the state to increase wealth.

1.) To decide its no longer about imposition of will and removal of choice (what my original question was asking) and claim that its simply about "aggression" is moving the goal posts. It doesn't matter if you knock him down or lie to him or not, the simple act of you buying it removes his choice to buy it. Now, his part in the interaction is non-voluntary.

2.) I don't think you are entitled to 100% of that labor. Society as a whole provides you with necessary services. The threat of some sort of consequences from the police is what keeps people from breaking the law (normally. there are obviously some exceptions). We are protected from foreign aggression by our military. We drive on roads built buy the government. We have access to clean water (generally. I dont think this argument holds up in Flint, MI lol) because the government makes sure its clean. There are necessary services provided by the government that you rely on. Therefore, society as a whole is entitled to a portion of the product of your labor (money, in this case). You are intrinsically dependent upon the labor of others and you owe part of your own labor to them in return. Lastly, I believe you are who you are because of other people, and your interactions with them. You would not be in the situation you are in, have the things you have, believe what you believe without others. You are not truly self-owned, as you'd like to be.

3.) Do you believe public services would be better if they were done by private companies? Who would pay them? Would all roads be toll roads? Do firefighters and police now send you a bill?

Also, Mike is correct about the definition of socialism:

Socialism:

a political and economic theory of social organization that advocates that the means of production, distribution, and exchange should be owned or regulated by the community as a whole.

Communism:

a political theory advocating a society in which all property is publicly owned and each person works and is paid according to their abilities and needs.

Property and means of production are two completely separate things. You can have a socialist country that is not communist, and a communist country that is not socialist. Or, you can have a country that is both. They are not mutually exclusive ideas, nor are they intrinsically linked.

Here is a hypothetical. All the libertarians get their wishlist granted, and we end up with a global stateless community with no borders and unrestricted free trade. What will stop individuals, those that have very little, from gravitating to those individuals/organizations that have money, resources and private armies. Maybe I am naïve, but that sounds like a return to feudalism to me.

Best quote ever on socialism: "The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money." Margaret Thatcher.

“Despite a voluminous and often fervent literature on "income distribution," the cold fact is that most income is not distributed: It is earned.”
― Stanford economics professor Thomas Sowell

“Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery..”
― Winston S. Churchill

"Socialism of any type and shade leads to a total destruction of the human spirit and to a leveling of mankind into death."
Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Scott McMahon wrote:I support the concepts of libertarianism, but her is the question that I haven't heard anyone answer. What happens to the free market when there is nothing left, or the system is so broken there are no more checks and balances? You look at our economic system currently and it is as defined. 99% of the population is spending pretty much their entire income, while the top 1% is spending what? About 10% of their income? There is no trickle down economics, there is no circulation of money. Wages are stagnate or declining while the income of the 1% is steadily increasing. So what does a libertarian recommend when the well has run dry and there is no more free market because a small population owns EVERYTHING. Shall we revolt then?

The Blueprint Part Dank wrote:

I was talking about the french revolution with a buddy the other day. Two hundred years is a fair amount in modern society, but it's not that far away that the French proletariat were literally chopping the heads of the rich and nobles off.

Marched every one of them that didn't escape and literally chopped their heads off.

Lots of similarities in our overall climate.

I think a major source of conflict/confusion in this thread is people confusing social democracy (what Democratic Socialists support) and pure socialism. The difference was pointed out somewhere earlier in the thread, but people still seem to be arguing this...

Quinn Baker wrote:I think a major source of conflict/confusion in this thread is people confusing social democracy (what Democratic Socialists support) and pure socialism. The difference was pointed out somewhere earlier in the thread, but people still seem to be arguing this...

Everyone just wants to paint a broad brush that we will be standing in Russian bread lines singing songs about the mother nation.

None of that is going to happen. LOL there are too many guns in the US. We'll see another civil war before we start work on the government commune.

Scott McMahon wrote: I was talking about the french revolution with a buddy the other day. Two hundred years is a fair amount in modern society, but it's not that far away that the French proletariat were literally chopping the heads of the rich and nobles off. Marched every one of them that didn't escape and literally chopped their heads off. Lots of similarities in our overall climate.

Yes, both domestically and globally. The enlightenment was fueled in large part due to the ease of access to information brought on by the printing press. The established order of ruling classes for almost a millennium was unable to sense the changing tide until it was drowning them, we've lived in that order for a few centuries now, but with the internet as our modern day "printing press" and an established order disconnected once again from the common man, a paradigm shift is inevitable.

Tim ... it is not "sharing" when you are forced. Socialism is "sharing" while staring at the barrel of a gun.

Oh... and Tim... look at your Dem presidential candidates ... very old and very white, unlike the very diverse GOP field.

Todd Graham wrote:Tim ... it is not "sharing" when you are forced. Socialism is "sharing" while staring at the barrel of a gun. Oh... and Tim... look at your Dem presidential candidates ... very old and very white, unlike the very diverse GOP field.

You're essentially doing exactly what I was talking about in my last post... You're arguing against socialism, not social democracy (or democratic socialism).

Difference bw socialism and democratic socialism:

1. Socialism can be defined as a system of collective ownership and management of the means of production and the distribution of goods. Democratic socialism gives more importance to a democratic character.

2. Socialism can also be stated to be a society where all people work as equals cooperating for the common good of all.

3. While having almost the same principles as that of socialism, democratic socialism believes in a socialism through the ballot box. It states that any change in government and society should be through fair elections.

4. Socialism was a term that originated in the late 18th century and early 19th century as a result of the economic and social changes linked with the Industrial revolution.

5. Democratic socialism became prominent in the late 19th century.

From the Democratic Socialists of America website:

What is Democratic Socialism? Q & A
Democratic socialists believe that both the economy and society should be run democratically—to meet public needs, not to make profits for a few. To achieve a more just society, many structures of our government and economy must be radically transformed through greater economic and social democracy so that ordinary Americans can participate in the many decisions that affect our lives.

Democracy and socialism go hand in hand. All over the world, wherever the idea of democracy has taken root, the vision of socialism has taken root as well—everywhere but in the United States. Because of this, many false ideas about socialism have developed in the US.