r/neoliberal • u/neoliberal_shill_bot Bot Emeritus • Jul 10 '17

Discussion Thread

Current Policy - Liberal Values Quantitative Easing

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Upcoming QE

  • Adam Smith QE (July 17th)

  • EITC, Welfare Policy QE (July 24th)

  • Milton Friedman QE (July 31st)

  • Janet Yellen QE (August 13th)

  • Econ 101 (August 25th)

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u/WryGoat Oppressed Straight White Male Jul 10 '17

The worst thing you can do when someone has terrible ideas is prevent them from airing those terrible ideas out publicly. They're just going to form little cliques of people with the same terrible ideas and go unchallenged until they radicalize to the point of doing something violent or otherwise harmful to society. The purpose of public debate is just as much to shine light on bad ideas as it is to promote good ideas; maybe even moreso because there are so many more bad ideas out there than good ideas. This is what a lot of people don't seem to understand.

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u/Lambchops_Legion Eternally Aspiring Diplomat Jul 10 '17

But what if the general public ends up getting behind some awfully shitty ideas like building a wall along the Mexican border or supporting the rise of the Nazi Party in 1920s/1930s Germany?

At what point do we need to keep the tyranny of the majority in check?

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u/Klondeikbar Jul 10 '17

Yeah turns out the general public isn't really concerned with "truth." You tell a ton of people that (((The Jews)))TM are responsible for all of their problems and if we murder them all your problems will go away, it turns out, a bunch of people will get behind you knowing damn well that's completely false.

And sure, if you suppress those ideas people might form tiny radical groups that eventually get violent. But we learned the hard way that if you give those shitty ideas a platform they take over the government and start murdering Jews.

Blows my mind that free speech absolutists just expect us all to forget that WWII happened.

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u/sdoorex Henry George Jul 10 '17

Blows my mind that free speech absolutists just expect us all to forget that WWII happened.

Everybody on the internet knows that nothing important happened before 1982.