We could arrive at decisions, if we were all sane…
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9FDIne7M9o[/youtube]
What does “the voice of the people” mean? Be specific, as I think it largely currently does, as lots of Americans are uninformed and uninterested in the political system. As a result, those with stronger/more involved opinions change more. I am still not convinced that the old system needs to be thrown out yet. Would I love perfection, meaning no corruption, absolute interest and knowledge from the entire public and deep thinking, wise leaders, HELL YES, but the world is not as I wish it. The world is as it is and we must work within that, using what we have to the most efficient use for everyone.
Reduce taxes, along with, a flat, consumption tax. Reduce regulation. Reduce the size of government, so that the corruption that is inevitable does not have as deep an impact.
I certainly go along with reducing the number of people, offices, responsibilities of the Federal Government. I’ve said that.
Get rid of out-dated offices that have taken on whatever in order to perpetuate their existence. Get rid of redundancies and overlapping ‘responsibilities.’ A team of logistics experts would make short shrift of most of the top-heavy, Federal Government ‘departments,’ positions, responsibilities. Once done, they could disappear into the setting sun.
But would they be allowed to do so? I don’t think so.
If they did, how would we absorb the millions of unemployed people in which such a purging would result? Could our existing ‘social programs’ handle the results? Could our corporations give new jobs to those people even with a subsistence wage?
Please think about the ramifications.
Yes, most US citizens are uninformed and uninterested in the political system. Please answer me, “Why?” Do they mostly have IQs below the average? Are they mostly uninterested because they continue to believe in the democratic ‘process,’ no matter how else they’re affected? Is “The world is as it is and we must work within that, using what we have to the most efficient use for everyone” or is change possible? Have they been defeated before they could begin to object?
I have my hobby horses–some of us do. If I had my druthers, I’d challenge the Patriot Act and its results. I’d do what I could to get rid of Homeland Security, or at least try to stop its arming of police SWAT teams with military type weapons to use in raids against minor drug possessors. Is this all a response to some states legalizing marijuana possession while a vocal majority still think it’s a crime?
Has the ‘voice of the people’ been raised in this instance, or is it ‘the voice of the few’ who still think of marijuana as the ‘devil’s weed?’
And, yes, the minority voice has a great deal of merit, but should it influence law in such a way? Sure, as long as the influence is relatively unbiased.
There are ‘liberal’ people trying to change the Uniform Code of Military Justice so that rape is considered a crime. It should be! Rape is rape, after all.
But what about using the Uniform Code of Military Justice to promote religious proselytization? The Code requires that lower ranking soldiers follow their superiors orders. Should this mean that the lower ranks must follow their superiors’ orders concerning religious beliefs and practices? It’s happening, according to what you read.
Does that make it the ‘right’ thing to do–or is just the Right thing?
I’m not being very nice, am I?
Why not phase it out gradually? Don’t sever anybody, just wait 'til they retire and don’t hire additional staff in the meantime?
I think it’s a matter of diversity of interests and talents. Not everybody can be interested in or knowledgeable of politics. Some are into music, others into cuisine, some into architecture, others into children. We each have our different focuses and that’s what makes us, as a whole, a functional society.
Rape isn’t considered a crime?
I have reply’s for all your question. Not the time though… This one is easy, by definition half have blow average IQ’s. If more had lower, the average would lower…
I’m looking forward to your replies. I do hope you’ll include your citations.
For the record (?), just what is the average IQ nowadays and where did you find your info. Last I knew, the average was 100. How can that have changed, If the average is still 100? I thought it always remained at 100, and varied only (in a very small percentile) according to whatever test was used.
Btw, to the best of my knowledge, I’ve never taken an IQ test. I’ve taken the MMPI which also rates a person’s IQ, but very broadly. I really am very interested in your thoughts and how you arrived at them.
I have no idea what the average is. I don’t really care either, the tests are written by people who place importance on their own intelligence and training, as a result, the test are naturally bias. I’ve never taken one either… Took the pre-SAT’s, I think, and did ok, above average, but not the best… As to how I know, that half the planet is below average IQ, Maths. It’s not complicated… Take 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10. The average is 5.5, with 1-5 below and 6-10 above… Half on each… It is part of the literal definition of average (technically it’s the Mean, Mode and Median get wonky), half is going to be above, half below. IQ’s are going to crowd around the average though, creating my friend the bell curve. (I love the sexy bell curve.) Interestingly, men’s IQ is a flatter curve, with more high IQ’s and more low IQ’s, than the woman’s IQ, which is got more IQ’s in a peaking central point; but, the high central point on the woman’s is shifted towards the higher IQ side. This means that the average woman is smarter than the average man, but there are more genius men, then there are genius women.
Personally, and completely secondary to this thread, I think this is because woman are chosen, as mates, for their intelligence, men are chosen for other qualities. I also stand with it as proof that a woman needs to be smarter than her man to make a good couple… Though, this is all personal, observed opinion, not based on a study or anything that I could link too, so take it as such.
In psychology, the average is declared as “100”, always.
That way, no one can see it shifting and drifting so strongly.
My math brain just died…
IQ’s are relative measures. They present a unified test presume to have something to do with mental skills and intelligence. They test a sample group and take the average as the standard, “100”. Everyone else is measured by that standard.
You really don’t want to know why.
I’m pretty sure you did. If it doesn’t work, but you keep applying resources until it does, unlimited is the foreseeable number.
I’m starting to think we are talking past each other. Let me rewind. I agree things need to be studied, but a limit on the amount of energy (in any form, money or manpower) applied to a study must be applied. In the free market the limit is what a company is going to apply before they see it as a lost cause. In government, there is no reason to ever face that we are getting no new information out of a “study.” More and more resources can just keep being dumped in, being wasted the whole time, when we could be “feeding the poor,” instead.
And you don’t think it’s possible for one second that the people applying the “tests” have a motive that changes their outcome? I made another thread showing exactly that people manipulate numbers to their own liking. And that’s not including things such as second hand smoke, endangered species, and so much more. I think my favorite example is children going hungry. They measure people going hungry by, the people that can get food stamps, and don’t… The people that don’t are going hungry, I hope you understand the problem with this.
LOL, I love those moments. I get them all to often…
By itself, it’s not. What happens next, though, can all to often determine the results that are reported.
LOL, I thought the second was just a reiteration of the first and almost cut it…
If the government does not oversee energy production, it cannot assign its production to its favored supporters.
If the government cannot bail out banks, it cannot chose the winners and the losers.
I’m not always great at saying things in a “nice” way. One, because I think worrying about the feelings of the other gets in the way of the message, if I pussy foot around trying to get a point across bad things can happen. (Read Outliers, The Ethnic Theory of Plane Crashes, for good reasons not to pussyfoot around.) Two, because of the first one, I just don’t have a lot of practice… It’s a flaw I’ve analyzed a lot recently…
Snort
You show bias with the words working class, this is a Marxist idea that is little more than a cliche… Something that does our thinking for us. The working class is not real people, it is a group of indiscriminate people, that flows… It’s like saying, this section of the river, then believing the liquid in it remains the same no matter the point in which we look at it. People are always passing in and out of “classes,” they do not hold still. “Working class” gets defined in such a way as that it fits a preconceived notion of stuck in one place. That people cannot move out of it, that they need options that they need Government to fix it for them. As though it could, especially as those attempting to do so don’t even understand the base problem is their own definition.
As to why the quality of life improved in the U.S. during those times… Part of it was WWII and WWI. Europe had blown up so much of its infrastructure that the US was the only place to get things made. Largely though, a big aspect of it is the ability to patent ideas. It created a setting that allowed people to pass around idea’s and still get paid for them. Before, new idea’s where closely guarded secrets, stopping the spreading of information… Which is the only way people can get out of one place and into another. There are a lot of reasons though, all compounding with each other. A great book that I’m working my way through is Knowledge and Power by George Gilder and he explains it as entropy as an aspect of Information Theory.
This is again all tied up with preconceived notions. The belief that because someone is smart, that person can understand all markets across all fields in all places. It is arrogant… If those people had better options they would take them. We do not exist on a planet in which everyone gets everything, because there simply isn’t enough to go around. Yes, sweatshops suck. What is the alternative they have? If their only alternative is to mine trash heaps, and the sweatshop is an upgrade, are you qualified to decide what they should get? Are you going to come over there with guns and force them out of the place they prefer to be?
I think you have it… Don’t limit yourself to just this as a possibility of how the system is manipulated… People are fucking clever.
This is why I used multiple real world examples, like the meat industry. The regulations, etc is actually what happened, and one reason why all those little butcher shops don’t really exist any more… Sometime I’ll tell you about the fucked up shit involved with Beer and the Trinity system…
I agree that we cannot only base things on our crazy imaginations… The problem is always, how much did we spend on the hope that something turns out good? How many lives are you willing to give up for your pet project?
Agreed. As long as it’s remembered, there are always costs, not all of the costs are right up front and easy to find.
I refuse to play this game, I like idea’s and playing with them too much to play the “what if the idea gets out there” problem… I had a girlfriend that used to bring this idea up, sounds to much like “magic” to me.
Just examples of when things can be two things… And bad jokes… Ignore them…
But then it because a self fulfilled proficiency or at the very least, not actually average. We cannot go around reusing terms that apply in all the other places as one thing, but in a specific science don’t apply. I’m looking at you economics!!!
I’ll do my best, but I must say, you have not up to this point provided citations. It is presumptive to demand them of me. I know you believe and know what you know. That does not mean I do. I have had issues with others here on this, in a couple of words, I’ll show you mine if you show me yours…
How could we not? Provided we have no minimum wage, the price of bureaucratic jobs would go down. Some people, many of the government once for sure, would have to accept lower wages. Sticky wages would be a problem, but eventually the market would adjust.
This assumes that it would need to, it also suggests that government employment is a form of social program.
Subsistence wage is all preconceived notions. I cannot answer to those.
Only if you think beyond stage one.
Does it matter? They do, that is the reality we live in. Name a time when they have? Then tell me how to make it that way again.
When I answered this the fist time, I assumed math was at work… Now I have no idea… Thank you James. 
I have a boss, her words were, “I realized I was stressing out about something I could have very little effect on, so I stop caring.” Maybe the politics are to far away, relying on federal government has resulted in a disconnect, with the same in reverse happening for the politicians.
Depends on what change you’re talking about… It is quite easy to make life much harder for everyone except a few people, that’s change.
Possible, but we have the Tea Party that raised their voices and objected, did you support their change?
I don’t know. I live in one of those states, and can tell you the results have been mixed… It is interesting to watch though…
A hobby horse of mine is the anti-tobacco laws.
I don’t know anyone that isn’t over 55 that believes that. The rest are like me and abstain and work towards not wanting our children to smoke marijuana. I’ve seen damage from it, lots of it. It is not a simple thing.
Lots of assumptions.
Rape is a crime in the military. Enforcing it is hard. To many fools redefining rape to mean things it never should be, to many people misusing rules.
You mean according to what Lisbethrose reads… I have not read as such. This is not a statement on the validity of such either.
Yes
You seem ok from my side. Though these last few seem like minor details not big issues.
At the end I find nothing needing citations. But, if you wish for one on something specific let me know, I’ll find what I can.
I’m taking a break from this thread. I can’t keep up. You guys keep keep going. Eric, I would like to respond to your post when I get back.
Unless you take a month long break, you can keep up, it took me like three-four days to respond to you. 
I am enjoying the conversation with both of you. You are welcome to take your sweet time.
Hi, Eric, This is actually about the 4th time I’ve tried to write. I’ve had a lousy cold for the past three days and have obviously done something wrong. Whatever.
To answer one of your posts from a while ago; candidates drop out, or are dropped, frequently and for a lot of reasons. They drop out due to lack of money or support and they’re dropped because of lack of support. But you knew that, surely.
You place a lot of credence on the Austrian School of Economics; in other words, the Hayek/Keynes debate, which still goes on. Both theories are great, but no theory is ever practiced completely, because it’s a theory. I was probably in error when I said economic ‘theory’ should be taught more than it is. I mean that more people should have a basic knowledge of the reasons behind the development of the various theories–a sort of ‘history of various economic theories and how they affected financial stability/instability around the world.’
I use citations whenever I feel they’re needed to introduce the reader to something s/he may not otherwise know or may not be able to find in newspapers and/or on-line. I read that Homeland Security was training and arming police SWAT teams in the use of military-type weapons in al Jazeera America but it’s in other newspapers, as well. I read about the UCMJ and the changes being made to it online.
My Father spent 30+ yrs. as an Army officer. I know that neither the military nor the Catholic Church is a ‘democracy.’ In the Army, soldiers are trained to obey orders first and question them afterward. The Church trains us not to question, at all. These are things that interest me because they shaped my life. I seek, and try to find, because of that–and always try to go beyond ‘stage one’ thinking.
Are government jobs ‘social programs?’ I think they are, in a lot of ways. A CS or GS job will pay more (when you add the benefits) than will a comparable private ‘market,’ for the same work. It’s very difficult to be fired from either the civil or the government services, so there’s job security.
Mainly, there’s education and the various military schools we have in the US. If not a college education, there’s training for all sorts of jobs, if you’re lucky enough to be chosen for that training–and then be assigned to a unit that uses that training. But that’s today.
All sorts of government programs were established after the US entered WWI and WWII. I’m thinking of nursing, now. Citation: Visiting the museum display on Memorial Day when we went to put flowers on my family’s graves. In order to build up the supply of nurses, the Military used all sorts of incentives, including, but not limited to, free education. In order to do that, the Federal government paid nursing schools to accept more ‘qualified’ women and to raise the level of education in order to meet Federal requirements.
I don’t know how many of these programs still exist, but a lot of military academies do–and have been added to over time. They’re not called ‘social programs’ and their budgets aren’t correspondingly labeled. Anything, of course, having to do with the Military goes into the defense budget, which is guaranteed to pass every two years. This includes new technology and weaponry. The best test for those are field tests during a war. Look at Agent Orange.
What did the TEA Party change, other than the make-up of Congress? And does it even go by that name any more, once people of its choosing were elected into Congress? I thought a lot of its members were disgruntled when they discovered Social Security was a ‘program’ that would be cut if cutting all social programs were carried out.
To me, the TEA ‘party’ is a religious political ‘movement’ with its roots in Southern fundamentalism, which is mostly religious. As you know, I vehemently object to the introduction of religion into politics. This doesn’t mean I want to ‘reform Democracy’ in order to keep any one out of the structure and process of democracy. The US form of democracy doesn’t allow for such a thing.
But the US form of democracy has never been ‘rule of the majority.’ I live in hope that it will never become the ‘rule of fringe group’ religious minorities, as well.
Enjoy,
Liz.
Ugh, I empathize, in another thread I wrote an intire response, was on the third read through and let my daughter use my computer… She closed the window, the whole thing was lost… I’m sorry you are sick, please take your time get better. This is interesting but not a rush thing.
Yes, but the lack of support is shown through money. If they had a source of money that was not connected to support, they just got the same amount as those with no support, why would they drop out?
Yes, it is called economics. The Hayek/Keynes debate is specifically about macroeconomics. Microeconomics has different debates. I agree with the Austrian School, which is why I use it, though not everything I’ve talked about is Austrian. In many cases, it is just economics.
I think both are completely necessary. The actual theories are more important to my mind, much like knowing math and applying it is more important that to know, many aspects of geometry was created by the ancient Greeks, that they didn’t have algebra…
I can accept those terms.
To me, that sounds like a bias source. Not an illegitimate one, just bias. It helps, I’ve also heard about such things from other sources… Many Conservatives are not happy about the same things. I have one twitter person I follow that is my access to all the really crazy shit…
Stage One thinking is a term invented by Milton Friedman and covered in great detail in Advanced Economics: Thinking beyond stage one, By Thomas Sowell. We people vote to raise minimum wage, they do not think beyond stage one. (There are more examples in the book)
That is exactly the problem.
I’m with Mike Rowe on this, college is the problem, we need more trades in America… To many people with Philosophy degrees and not enough real application. Remember Aristotle was on of the first to suggest he, and his ilk, should be put in charge of everyone else… Arrogance and preconceived notions.
We are much worse off for it. The economic reality was, those government programs started BEFORE WWI with Woodrow Wilson, though Harding being such a crap president didn’t help. The policies of FDR delayed and expanded the recovery, they did not stop it. citation
Yes, the government did these things. This does not hold that it was a wise decision to do so.
I don’t know agent orange, I’ll look at it.
It put huge pressure on the Republican party to move towards a more Libertarian outlook. The biggest fighting going on the Republican party right now is from establishment Republicans that have been acting like Liberals, except on a few specific issues. If the Republicans move towards the Tea Party, they might actually do what they are supposed to be doing. I am not a huge fan of President W. Bush, but that’s cuz he passed progressive crap policy after progressive crap policy.
Yesish. A lot of the people will still tell you they are tea party supporters, but they have recognized (because it is made up of adults instead of children like occupy) that forming a third party is stupid. Instead it became their goal to kick the shit out of some republicans and take over. I wish them well…
Don’t believe what liberals say about the Tea Party. It’s like talking to a KKK member about black people.
I disagree with you on a lot of that paragraph. The Tea Party is about freedom, not religion. Liberalism/Progressivism is the current most popular religion I know of, some 35% of the US, it has its sins, its saints and its virtues. Though I would like to see anyone practicing progressivism removed from office…
Thankfully, it is REALLY hard to have the fringe groups rule. Though the LGBT organizations are working hard to do so…
I did, and thank you for it.
A good way to think of this is the difference between the Many Worlds Theory and Copenhagen Interpretation. Most people don’t really need to know the difference and physics can be understood to a great degree without even getting to them. A huge chunk of economics holds true, long before getting to Hayek/Keynes.
Keynes suggested that the economy works in cycles, Austrian economists agree (Keynes totally gets the credit though, that’s what his Nobel was for). Keynes put forth the way to control it was to dump huge amounts of money in to the cycle. Austrian says that will pull it out of the cycle, but that it will create a bigger drop in the future. Keynes says yes, but then we just dump MORE money in, Austrian says this just devalues the money.
Austrian theory suggests that though the cycles do exist, new technology and advancements eventually fix any dips in the cycle. That like a cut, the wounds heal. Keynes says that eventually is to long of time, “that eventually we are all dead.” So Keynes suggest putting bandages on everything, that it must be fixed now.
Austrian theory leans towards “supply side” because “supply makes it’s own demand.” Until the Cell Phone was invented, no one knew they wanted one… Makers had no guarantee that they would become such a huge market. Keynes cannot adjust for new inventions, it is a stagnate theory.
Keynes economics is economics light. Economics with all the sharp prickly parts shaved off. It is practiced by politicians because it gives them power and permission to spend other peoples money. The economy is complicated with many moving parts, most referred to as “human.” Attempting to adjust for all of these parts is stupidly complex. More, things work better when left on their own.
Now, Eric, obviously I didn’t mean it that way. If I think something can be made to work by throwing X dollars at it, I obviously don’t think X is unlimited. I took you to be asking how much resources to apply to something which presently doesn’t work (but could be made to work if tweaked in the right way). If you really think something cannot possibly work in principle, then that’s a different matter.
Also, you once again omitted my caveats:
I agree with everything you say here (with some reservations about the government not caring if we’re getting any useful results out of studies, but I’ll agree with you on that for now), but it occurs to me that maybe you’re misinterpreting me as saying we should commission the government to conduct and oversee these studies; No, no, no! 
There’s a reason why I said I’m beginning to realize that these kinds of studies are conducted by professionals in the relevant fields anyway.
I’m also beginning to think our disagreement is based merely on the possibility that I have more faith in the social sciences and their methods than you do. If that’s the case, we can probably agree to disagree as we at least seem to see eye-to-eye on the general principle that we should fund, by a limited amount, whatever, in our best estimation, we predict will work to solve certain problems, but not beyond those limits. It’s the estimation which probably differs between us, and so we come to different conclusions on the limits of the funding.
Well, there’s a subtle difference between manipulating the study in order to suit your own biased agenda and just being stupid about how you conduct it, but I’ll leave that for a later discussion. Right now, I think the biases and unscrupulous manipulations you point out can be easily exposed if you just look at the methods they used to conduct the studies. I’m familiar with the controversies surrounding the gender wage gap, and if I recall correctly, the figure of 77 cents per dollar was arrived at by taking the entire lump sum of working men’s yearly incomes across the nation, averaging them, and comparing that with the entire lump sum of working women’s yearly income across the nation (also averaged). But if that was the method used to arrive at the 77 cents per dollar figure, then it’s not hard to see the flaws in such an approach, and how further, more nuanced, methods can probably give us a more accurate figure (accurate, that is, insofar as measuring actual discrimination is concerned). In the kinds of studies I described (discrimination in hiring based on sex, color, etc.), the methodology is clearly laid out, and to me it would seem very difficult to fudge the results while working within this methodology.
Not saying it can’t happen, of course, but on this point, let me bring in something I said to Uccisore earlier in this thread (in regards to designing tests to screen for qualified political candidates):
In other words, if a study reports that it arrived at conclusion X, and it clearly lays out the method it used to get there, and you deem that method to be relatively robust in the sense that it significantly limits the influence of personal biases and agendas, then the only way you could maintain that the study is significantly untrustworthy is if you suspect they lied about the methodology they used or the results that it got, and that requires something more that mere bias or personal agenda. It requires conscious and very deliberate corruption.
Not saying this can’t happen either, but I think if you’re that paranoid–that you think there’s just that much corruption in the social sciences (not to mention the natural sciences as I don’t see what would limit corruption of this kind to the social sciences)–then I return to the point I made earlier about the distinction between believing something because it’s logically possible in principle and believing it because it seem it would happen all the time in practice.
You may believe this–that corruption of this caliber occurs in the social sciences–but I don’t. Again, it comes down to how much faith we have in the system and in human nature generally. If you want to persuade me, I’m going to need extensive proof.
I agree. But right now, I’m focused on whether such studies can be done–whether it’s possible to conduct such studies and get reliable and accurate results. The problem you point out here is the problem of how to get those results to the people, and how to allow the people to distinguish between the reliable/accurate results and the bunk. I’m treating the latter as a separate, though still important, question.
Yes, I gathered this is what you meant, but I needed examples to judge whether this would be a good thing or a bad thing. Case in point, the examples you give make it seem like a good thing (but perhaps you differ). Do we want the government assigning production to its favored supporters? Do we want them deciding winners and losers?
I think in general, the trade-off of limiting the government’s power is that it makes it more difficult for them to govern. ← This certainly brings into question such an approach–but two things can be said here:
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The goal of this approach would not be to remove the governing abilities of any group of people, but to transfer it to the people in general.
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The whole point of shifting things in a trade-off is not to push it to one extreme or the other, but to find balance. If the point of trying to limit the governments power is to reduce the amount of corruption therein, then what we’re really trying to do is to strike a balance between the government’s corruption and the supposed chaos and anarchy which would result from the government having no power. We’re not trying to create chaos and anarchy. We shift the balance because we figure we’ve got too much of the problems that result from having excessive weight on one side of the balance and not enough on the other; we shift it because we figure we’re not at the optimal state and we wish to get there.
Don’t sweat it. I wasn’t trying to impose any rules on you for how to conduct yourself in a discussion. I was just trying to explain what, to me, are signs of a willingness to cooperate and signs of unwillingness (more like signs of a willingness to cooperate and a lack of signs all together, in which case it’s not fair of me to judge at all).
Ok, there were many reason–this shouldn’t be a surprise, but I’m still skeptical; I still suspect that a lack of minimum wage was one of the causes of poor working conditions, and probably a very significant one. By now, I get that you’re obviously in favor of free markets and against socialism, but I go back to our other discussions on trade-offs and striking balances: I think the optimal level at which to make working conditions bearable and fair would have to include some degree of enforced regulations and interventions (although this need not be the government per se–perhaps unions, although I don’t know if this is any better. ← Is it still “socialism” if it’s not the government intervening?).
I’m not sure who you think I’m assuming to be smart or an expert on the global economy (Liz?), but I don’t think it’s fair to label me “arrogant”. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Eric, but I’m approaching this topic by asking questions and making requests to get into certain areas of discussion. I’m trying not to presume too much or put forward my biased views as if they were incontestable truths (although, obviously, my biases are going to get through in one way or another). When it comes to topics I know all too little about, I try to engage others who seem to know more than I do as a pupil might engage a teacher: I ask questions, I explore certain possibilities, I make requests to explain this or that, and I’ll even challenge what I’m being taught but only to show where I’m having difficulty understanding or agreeing in the hopes of getting a clearer or more consistent picture. And yes, of course my biases and preconceptions are going to seep into everything I say, sometimes even with my full awareness (and that can be okay), but I don’t think this is arrogance. All I asked for is if we could touch on the subject of the global market and the existence of sweat shops and other such “abuses” (preconceived as such, though not necessarily misconceived) in the hopes of getting some clarification on how you see it (and then I tied it into what Liz was talking about earlier–not necessarily to bolster her point but just to tie together certain separate threads of discussion so that this thread as a whole remains as “tied together” as I can possibly make it).
Eric, I get this point. In fact, I was anticipating it. So it’s a start. Now your overall point, if I’m not mistaken, was that this disparity between the rich and the poor, with a gaping void between them, is something that natural market forces will resolve over time. But others, I’ve heard it said, claim that this gap is increasing and that this is the natural tendency of capitalist markets. Can you comment on this? (again, I’m anticipating your answer–your point about sweat shops being an upgrade to what would otherwise be a more dismal market hinting at your response–and I’m not necessarily going to fight you on it).
I know. When you’re playing chess, it pays to assuming your opponent is clever.
Why not now?
Yep, but it’s always going to be a balancing act, and there’s always going to be a certain amount of guesswork involved. Where most reasonable and educated thinkers disagree is in the details.
Minus the “magic” part, I agree (although I tend to say I can’t help but to express ideas rather than that I refuse to play that game). But I do take it as a fact. It’s a fact that once an idea is express, it can be used by others for either constructive or destructive purposes. But I also keep separate the facts that I acknowledge from my reactions to them of taking moral responsibility. That’s not to say I disregard moral responsibility, but rather than I believe that for an act or a decision to be truly moral, it must be done out of freedom, not out of being enslaved to a rule. For example, I could force myself to shut my mouth if figured some idea I want to express might be dangerous, but that would be to follow a self-imposed rule: if the idea might be harmful, don’t express it. Following rules simply because you’re “supposed” to is not true morality in my book–it’s either enslavement (in which case some other agency is owed the credit for making you follow the rule, and that agency bears some moral/immoral recognition) or it’s for some other gain besides simply doing the right thing (such as turning the other cheek simply to get into Heaven) which I don’t think qualifies as truly moral. But then how does one, like myself, end up doing the morally right thing? Simply by biding my time. I acknowledge the facts that I acknowledge, and when I’m in a state of mind in which I can decide, for myself, out of freedom, that I want to do the right thing (not because I feel guilty or because I’m “supposed” to), then I follow up on what I knew all along was the morally right thing to do. At least then I know I doing it for the right reasons (and if this is not true morality, it at least counts as the closest thing a human being can get to morality).
I should also point out that by biding my time, I also give myself the opportunity to, when the time comes, make a decision in the opposite direction–that is, towards what seems at first to be an immoral decision; but I don’t think this happens much, at least not with me, for I feel (and this is obviously subject to bias) that I have a relatively healthy and functional conscience, and this means that it will persuade me, most of the time, towards what’s moral and away from what’s immoral. But nevertheless, this whole approach requires at least being open to making immoral decisions–consciously and deliberately–for that is part and parcel of acting freely.
If your problem is with billionaires having too much control over the political process, I'm not sure of the relevance of trying to decide which billionaire you like better.
Well, yeah. That’s what a political party is. I honestly can’t think of anything else they ought to be doing or that I’d want them to be doing.