Microblog Memes

Society is transactional. If you want to get something you need to give something. Why? Go find a libertarian. Ask them what services they use they don’t want to pay for and they will give you a list. Then ask them what services they DO use they are paying extra for and wait for the stunned silence.

Society isn't strictly transactional either. That is a big part of the reason why libertarianism is such a fundamentally flawed, swiss cheese ideology.

To give you a gigantic counterexample: when social security started nobody had paid a dime into it. The first seniors to receive social security received it directly from the people that were working and paying into it. The same kind of thing happens today. Despite ignorant insistence that social security should be a "bank account" of some sort, it is not. Today's seniors receive their checks from today's tax payers.

Please prove me wrong and tell me about all the social services and general good doing you do with no strings attached.

The idea that altruism isn't simply rare but completely non-existent is simply...incorrect. There are multitudes of examples of it throughout history and if you look closely enough those continue into the present.

I wouldn't go so far as to say that humans are mostly good -- like Penn Gillette-style libertarians often do when their arguments are pressed upon. But I wouldn't say they're all inherently selfish goblins either. In large parts, we are on top of the food chain because of our ability to cooperate with each other. Evidence of the cooperative spirit of humans is all around you if you look closely enough.

(As I type my reply into an open-source browser on a decentralized platform on an open-source OS.)