I have been using two criteria to define a “republic”–either one could stand alone as a definition, but I like to think republics typically consist of both:
that the government consists of citizens (by the people).
that the government works for citizens (for the people).
At this point, 2) sounds pretty dismal, and what you’re saying sounds like 1) no longer applies either.
Of course, by technicality, the people that the government choose to run for office obvious have to come from the people–unless they’re being selected from foreign sources, or are a kind of simulacra–but if it requires exorbitant amounts of money (among other things?) to get into the major leagues, they’re probably not representative of the common citizen (did they at least get their on their own initiative?). Then there’s the possibility of being selected by genetic lineage. This is how monarchies work, and if monarchies are not republican, I don’t know how the US could be considered such if candidates are being selected based on families (as an aside, I think king Henrey VIII and Bush Jr. suffered the same syndrome: the spoiled little rich kid syndrome–the effect of being raised in such a pampered and catered-to environment–really atypical to how the common citizen experiences being raised in his/her own country–and becoming convinced that taking the leadership roll in his country was his destiny or privilege. I don’t know what you think of Bush Sr., but I think the reason Bush Jr. made such a horrible president, as Henry VIII and many kings before him made such horrible kings, was because of this syndrome).
What does this money pay for?
Do you think they’re colluded? In which case, it’s really just one party.
Do we at least have the freedom to change the law? This is the avenue that I think Liz, Eric, and Ucci would have to pursue if they are to see the changes they want to see.
If not, then we need violent and bloody revolution (hey, it has happen every few hundred years).
And if the government war machine is too powerful for us, like James says, then we need to take our guns and shoot ourselves in the head (at least you guys still have rights to arms).
Well… let’s not be two rash–perhaps we can wedge in another option before we all commit suicide: maybe US citizens can search abroad for help, look to other Western countries (or maybe non-Western if you trust the citizens of those countries would be sympathetic enough or willing to help–at this point, I’m not sure what would be better: to approach other governments or just the people of other countries).
But if Joker’s right (sorry, Mr. D), then no one’s going to stick out their necks for you–no one gives a shit (well, except for this particular Canadian friend and ally–but I guess I’m the only one in the world).
…
Liz, I’ll get back to you later… after I pull myself out of this depression.
Ok, I cleaned the frog tank (my daughter has a couple frogs–Spotty and Angelina). They seem happier now, so I’m happy (I actually helped someone! )
Hi Liz,
I read the rest of your post, but I want to comment on this before address everything else you said.
Liz is right here. It is a game.
And I think this hits on precisely what the crux of the problem is. It’s like Eric said: everything is a trade-off. If you want changes, if you want improvements, you have to be willing to accept certain other changes that you may not like or that may seem like some deprovements (<-- i.e. non-improvements). In the game of politics, the trade-off is that for whatever change or improvement you want to see, you have to hand over administration or control, to some degree, over to other people–people charged with implementing and overseeing those changes or improvements. Politics isn’t like managing your house or your car–the latter you could change or make improvements on all by yourself–but the name of the political game is to work with other people–you have to trust at least a few other people to help you make the changes or improvements you want to see. These other people need not be the government itself, but perhaps members of some lobbying group you’re a part of–but then even here, that makes the dynamics within the lobbying groups political, each individual having some agenda or personal life circumstances that probably don’t match up with yours exactly–and a republic is essentially (or supposed to be) one gargantuan group in which you have to hand over control to a certain subgroup whose job it is to see the whole system through to the design that the group as a whole envisioned–one man cannot do it alone.
In a game of chess, every move you make sets the stage for your opponent to make his/her move–and that’s when you hand over control to that opponent. I hear people saying that whatever solution the people come up with to change or improve the system, it will eventually get rigged by those in power. ← this is simply the opponent making his/her move. The idea that your move is guaranteed to win the game is as naïve as a chess player thinking that moving his rook to a certain position on the board will guarantee his ultimate win. The best you can hope for is that it may be a small step towards a win. So, yes, there is the possibility that incorporating psychiatric tests into the electoral process may eventually get hijacked and rigged by our opponents, but we have to make a move. If not psychiatric tests, then something else–and we have to accept that there are no moves that will guarantee a permanent win.
Now, Liz says that we should no longer agree to play–but I don’t think there’s any escape from this game. We may be able to refuse to play the particular game we’re playing now (or perhaps the sub-game within the larger game), but all this could mean is that we change the game. I think the larger game of playing politics in general must go on indefinitely, but it’s fair to say that one of the rules of the game is to change the game (the sub-game). Those in power are doing just that right now: they’re changing it from a republican/democratic game to a dictatorship game. But the one thing we absolutely cannot do is stop playing.
So far, I have seen two types who think we can stop playing: the naïve and the cynic. The naïve stops playing because he/she thinks the opponent will stop too, or at least that he/she, out of respect for our choice to stop playing, won’t take all our men (this is the whole putting-your-guns-down analogy I described in my depiction of democracy as two men holding guns at each other’s heads). The cynic stops playing because of a pessimistic sense of learnt-helplessness–he says “I suck at this game. I’ll never win. Therefore, why should I even try? I’ll go eat worms instead,” and he just let’s his opponent take all his men.
The only way to avoid the opponent taking all your men, although it will never guarantee it, is to keep playing. Just remember–no move is rig-free, it is always a setup for your opponent, and playing your move is, by definition, to hand over control to your opponent once played. The bright side of all this is that, while the ball is in our court, while it’s our turn, we have control over what move we make, and therefore control over the setup we leave in the hands of our opponent. We just need to be clever enough to make the setup as difficult to rig as we possibly can.
“By the people” doesn’t mean that people are in the government.
It means that decisions are being made “by the masses” and that requires a democracy, which the USA no longer is. It isn’t really a republic any more either because it is being run by foreign interests and dictatorial reign.
“The people” are not being represented in any fashion.
Truth is, I don’t know what it means, but I went through a process of elimination in my mind. “For” the people obviously means the government works for the people (or is owned by the people), and “of” the people, to me, seems to mean it is the people’s government (in the sense that any monarchy or dictatorship is the people’s government), so “by” was the only thing left and seemed fitting for “made up” of the people. But even if you say that decisions are made “by the masses,” well, that just means the masses are the government which means the government is made of the people.
Anyway, that’s not important. When are you going to tell us about AM? (and remember, defined “structure” first please ).
“For the people” means “for the benefit of the people” or “for sake of the people” (rather than for a king or an elite class).
“of the people” means that the government is made up of the average Joe (the “people”), not merely the elite.
“By the people” is referring to the process of governing (specifically through voting), not whoever might be a designated governing person, a magistrate (currently being used throughout the USA in place of Judges).
Actually it was pretty damn important, but because easily misconstrued, got usurped, as always. The average Joe has no say in the governing at all. And even if Joe were a member of the government, he still wouldn’t have much say, if any.
I’m not.
I have come to believe that it is one of those many things that must be seen in order to get past all of the current misunderstandings and confusions that create obfuscation and doubt. Too much simple minded presumption would be the only outcome of an attempt to explain it. And beyond that, I don’t think hardly anyone would be interested because they already think that they know too much of what they don’t. They want to just “do this simple minded thing” and everything will be better.
There actually is a pretty simple minded thing that could be done to make it all begin to get a lot better, but it isn’t simple at all as to why it would work. Some things just have to be left up to the engineers until it can be demonstrated to those overcome by the attempt to learn and think.
We in the West are impatient. We want answers now. We want quick fixes. Solutions to problems at this scale can take millennia (I’ll try to prolong my life as long as possible, but I’m afraid I’ll have to hand the torch over to someone else eventually).
But I personally am getting something out of this thread–in fact, a lot–if anyone ought to get anything out of a discussion thread, even if we always seem to do nothing but bicker and run around in circles, it’s a learning experience. I’m learning a lot, and that is helping (this might be a selfish motive, but I do want to give back somehow).
I’m glad you explained it this way, Liz, because it underscores just why I’m so unsure about the state of corruption in politics. To me, politics is like black box–all I see are the ways it moves and bumps around, and I hear things going on inside. But without being able to open it up to see what’s going on inside, this is too little information. I hear a bump: the Republicans bailed out the big corporations. Looks like corruption to me. But I don’t see what’s going on on the inside. Liz opens the box a little and shows me that they had to do this because these big corporations are playing on the global market, some of the owners not even being American, and we needed to compartmentalize the crash so as to prevent it from spreading damage around the world via these corporations and thereby destroying American credit (did I get this right?).
This is why I never know–I never know–when I’m looking at true corruption or whether I just don’t understand.
And the more I dig my heals into this, the more I realize I have to be agnostic about almost everything.
I just want to say to everybody: don’t be afraid of your biases, just recognize them when they rear their ugly heads.
This is why it seems useless to listen to the campaign promises of each party as a means of deciding which one to vote for. If politicians’ promises could be trusted, I’d probably listen to their campaigns more. Now it sounds more like Charlie Brown’s teacher, and each party (I’m thinking more of Canadian politics at this point) seems no different from my obscured perspective. This is affecting my impetus to get up and vote, and when I do, I make a point of spoiling the ballot (they say this too functions as a message to the government).
There are a few things that work like this: science is one. It only becomes popular by being demonstrated–you argue the virtues of science to a society that has had little to no experience with it, and they’ll laugh you out of the room (whether they understand you or not)–but you show them what it can do, and they sign a different tune.
Democracy/republicanism is like this too. Why do you think the French and American Revolution set of a chain reaction of revolutions around Europe and eventually other places of the world? And why the French and American Revolutions themselves were inspired by the Renaissance–the rediscover of Grecoroman culture, the first major example of a culture with a dominant democratic/republican element.
I also think the birth of reason in philosophy is like this–the reason it took off like wild-fire in the golden age of Greece–you can demonstrate why reason and logic are superior to other debate strategies by using it in public debates like the ancient Greek senate.
What you need, James, is to write book. It sounds like what you have to say requires more than a simple post on an internet forum, more even than an entire thread. You need a book. If you write one, I’ll buy it (actually, something else you can do is go through your history here at ILP, find all the threads in which you explain/debate it, and compile a list of links to them. If you do that, I’ll–maybe, probably–read them. Actually, what I’ll probably do is run them through my voice emulator, hit record on my sound capture app, make some MP3s and listen to them on my way to work (I bike to work–1 hour there, 1 hour back home–that’s 2 hours of listening every day). I could even upload them to my server and link to them from ILP–but I gotta warn you, I’ll capture everything–even any moments when you might have been embarrassed or torn to shreds by other ILP members).
But I wish you would give us at least a taste of AM; if you choose not to, I understand, but can you at least explain to us why you think the changes we’ve been discussing aren’t the kind of “structural” changes you think we need?
Yes, I think that I have said that myself (to you, in fact.)
I can’t even count the number of people who have told me that. But it’s LSST (“Long Story, Short Thread”)
I’ve actually done that, but more topic specific. And that is part of the problem - too many varied topics that are seemingly unassociated until you finally see the pattern. At that point, it all reduces to a pretty simple picture.
My Gyahd, people actually do that?? Listening to ILP on the road… isn’t that dangerous?
That wouldn’t be an issue, but in counter-warning; I often say things for sake of the response of a particular person, sometimes for the group, sometimes just because I felt like it at that moment, and sometimes just to get the thought “out there” knowing that it isn’t going to register for quite a while. if ever. Your weakness, is your presumption.
Well, you see, I actually have. And that is how foreign it is. People can’t even see it when I paint a picture. They presume, presume, presume… completely unaware that I have already been through every conceivable scenario and detail.
Like a little motorcycle engine: “Presume zoom zoom…
Presume presume preSUME zoom zoom…
Pre-zoooooooommmmm… prezoo[size=85]ooommmmmm… prezoo[/size][size=85]ooommmm… ••••••…[/size]”
My reference to “structure” was an attempt to point out that trying to improve on the people within the current structure (by testing or filtering them) won’t do it. Granted the testing would be a minor “structural change”, but too insufficient.
As I have pointed out many times, on many sites, if you actually want to see the real solutions, you seriously have to just mentally start over with a clean slate. What I know isn’t from “the shoulders of great men”.
Imagine that you have a completely blank notepad and you are not going to write anything at all onto it until what you write is absolutely certain to be true, “incontrovertible”. At that point, most people give up for a variety of excuses already. But the reality is that it actually can be done despite that irrational proposition that “I am absolutely certain that nothing is absolutely certain…”
If you do that, you very gradually begin to build what becomes a serious mountain of incontrovertible, crystal clear under-standing (grounding for thought). And if on a clear day, you look out from atop that mountain, what you see is Man, in all his glory “over there” atop His mountain covered in dark clouds and soot. But he isn’t just sitting there basking in his glory, and many truly glorious things he has found. He is busy recycling the trash upon which he built his mountain; refining it, rearranging it, repackaging it, reaching for the heavens. It is a seriously big mountain. But from my perspective, it still looks like just a big pile of shit being rearranged by the cream of the crap ([size=85]sorry, get carried away at times[/size]).
As you noted, new understandings, “Alien thoughts”, don’t enter the mind of men easily regardless of their quality, need, or purpose. The world of Man is already being inundated by “aliens”. And that is why a much different kind of alien is needed. But then again… it’s still too alien.
And in case you are one of the vast number of populous who don’t know, in sci-fi films, “space aliens” are metaphor for “people of abstract (spacey and a bit spiritual) alien understandings”, but they don’t want to call it a different “religion”. The ones invading your world are “little gray men”, whereas I am more of a “bluish-green space(y) alien” .
Yes, gib, you got it right. What happened in the US was one thing–a microcosmic event, if you will. The difference between a micro and a macrocosm is size and complexity. We’ve all read about what caused the crash in the US–the housing bubble, the improper lending, and so on. State and cities will be suffering for decades because of it. I don’t know if it could have been avoided, but I don’t think so. Look at what was going on starting with the attack on the WTC. People were frightened and the media fed that fright. But we had our knight in tarnished armor who promised safety for all–and gave us the Patriot Act and a war in Iraq. Oh, sigh, the unintended consequences of it all.
But it did take our attention off the crumbling of the “American Dream,” didn’t it? I really don’t think there was rampant “corruption” so much as there is economic and financial naivete. Our personal financial policy involves credit; we live in a ‘buy now, pay later’ world. Department stores used to have ‘lay-away’ plans; you didn’t get the merchandise being ‘held’ for you until it was paid for in dribs and drabs. Now, with a credit card, you get the product before it’s paid for–and, of course, you end up paying more because of the interest rates. If people do that with personal finances, why do they so conveniently forget that nations do it as well?
People listen to campaign promises, I think, because they’re dissatisfied with the status quo, certainly. They also vote because they ‘like’ or can identify with the person making the promises. Mainly, in my mind at least, we vote because of our biases–for whatever reason we have those biases. I cannot, for example, vote for anyone who repeatedly displays either racial or religious bigotry, even though they may not realize they’re doing so. Bigotry can be so subtle. I think I’m pretty open about those biases.
Getting back, however, to corruption. Is it corrupt for a financial ‘adviser’ to keep two sets of books–one that shows more gain than loss and one that shows the truth of the transactions? Isn’t it corruption if those two sets of books leads to personal, corporate, gain if only the first set is shown? I think so, but it’s happened throughout history. Now then, is it corrupt for a financial ‘adviser’ to teach another entity how to keep two sets of books when it leads to no gain for the teacher? I read an article that was very quickly withdrawn from the internet that alleged just that–a global financial corporation taught the Greek government how to ‘cook’ its books.
Perhaps the difference is in the gain. Larceny and fraud in a government is corrupt if it leads to personal/corporate financial gain. (And if you get caught!) It’s a very, very fine line. Although I believe that governments cross that line, sometimes, if not often, they will always say it was done for the betterment of the country.
Finally, Congress will never vote for anything that in any way diminishes its powers and privileges. That’s human nature.
Would you mind posting it (if you still have it), or maybe PMing me?
I’ve never listen to ILP–pod casts, course lectures, and audio books, but never ILP. Maybe that would be dangerous in and of itself (never mind on the road).
You’ve echoed exactly my style.
That last part made absolutely no sense, but the rest was clear (and quite eloquently put). Thank you for that.
So by changing the “structure” you mean “starting over” as opposed to tweaking the current structure.
Hmmm… Descartes tried what you’re suggesting–wiping the slate clean and adding nothing to it until he was absolutely certain that it is incontrovertible. I think he failed very early on (either in Meditation II or III), but I’m not closed minded to the possibility that it can be done.
But I’m not going to press you any further for it. I respect your decision to stay silent about it (at least for now), and I’ll just thank you for obliging me.
Just what is critical thinking? First of all, it doesn’t mean finding fault, it’s not that kind of ‘critical.’ For me, it’s using rational thinking to reach one’s own conclusions about things, assuming you’re rational to begin with, of course. You need metacognition in order to question yourself in depth so as to examine whether or not your ideas are rational and based on your own empirical experiences. I found that, sometimes I’ll have to stop questioning myself because I come up against the brick walls we all have in our minds and say to myself, “Well, that’s just the way I think!” Let it go for a while and it’ll keep on perking in your unconscious mind. When the idea comes back, try attacking it from a slightly different angle. If all goes well, you’ll be able to come up with a more sensible reason for thinking the way you think–something more reasoned than ‘it’s the way I think–or am–or was taught.’ If you can define how and why you think about this and that, you can decide whether to keep the thought or to change it.
Your answers are for yourself and no one else, unless you live in a sci-fi novel full of mind readers. Your answers need be ‘true’ only for yourself, unless there are other people in your mind along with you. If there are, I suggest you see a doctor. All they need to be is reasoned and logical. By logical, I mean, do they follow in logical order and can you link the propositions in a way that makes sense to you.
Critical thinking is a life-long process, but it’s not necessarily a full-time job. It can and should be taught, in my mind, starting at a very young age. Kids have pretty uncluttered minds, after all. But it takes a critical thinker to teach critical thinking and to use the Socratic Method wisely and well. Not many teachers are trained in–or taught–the Socratic Method.
On the other hand, it’s really about the only way I know of to arrive unscathed after clambering through the clamor of competing thought we’re faced with everyday. (Like the alliteration?)
Kind of like picking a favorite football team, even though you know they’re going to lose.
Do you think this might hint at a subtle danger? Voting for a particular party because they’re “your party” rather than because they’d be good for the country?
Sure, but what other reason besides personal corporate gain would one have for showing the first set?
You mean without any personal gain? Not even getting paid for divulging such secrets? I think if we’re going to label anybody “corrupt,” we’d have to take intentions into consideration–but I don’t know what the intentions are in this case. I mean, just to explain what happened in enough detail is to “teach” how to cook one’s books–but I would think the intention in this case would be to expose a conspiracy.
Well said, and I would also add that if it distracts from politicians doing the job they were hired/voted to do.
…
About critical thinking: to me, it means questioning authority–and not so much an “authority” like a master over you, but a source of knowledge and teaching. It’s the refusal to settle on “It’s the way I was taught,” and to question whether what you’ve been taught, or told, is reliable or properly grounded.
Yes, this I call “letting it sit,”–this is to be contrasted with the common mistake of young thinkers who, in reaction to certain kinds of cognitive dissonance, panic and slap together some patchwork account of why they think what they think. You don’t have to come up with all the answers right away–you can let it sit sometimes, and I find that this often results in the question resolving itself–as when you came back to it later, it more readily jumps out at you.
I good proposal for an education program of a nation.
Sure it does! Of course! But that’s how a lot of people vote! For some, voting for a ‘party’ goes back 'til the time the party was formed. That’s why I suggested ‘Candidate Campaign’ rather the ‘Party Campaign’ funding.
Again, and this is based on what I remember of what I thought after reading a no longer available source, I’m neither agreeing nor disagreeing with the allegation. It could have been done (justly?) by a major lender in order to ‘help’ Greece buy time and using two sets of books as a comparison. The corporate gain would come from not having a country default on its loan which would be a serious loss for the lender; not only financially, but also to its world-wide reputation. So the lender sends an emissary to Greece to find out what’s happening. If the emissary is caught, the corp will deny everything and lose the emissary. Meh! The emissary shows Greece what the lender wants to see. The country is willing to go along with it in order to stay afloat for as long as it can. Maybe the Greek Finance Officer felt the EU and the US would keep pouring money into the country. I really don’t know.
But take a look at ‘intention(s),’ here and ding them against what most people would consider ‘good business practices.’
Unfortunately, that isn’t the legal definition of fraud and/or corruption–and we’re dealing with law and legal definitions, here.
CRITICAL THINKING
gib said:
Yes, but you are your own authority, in the end. I was at Mass, many years ago, at the Cathedral in Omaha. The sermon was one I’ve never forgotten. Perhaps the priest was a Jesuit, I don’t know. Anyway, he said (or I heard him say–I understood him to say) the Church was becoming one in which the people were leaving more and more up to the priests to tell them what to do. Sound familiar. He went on to say that this was because people found it easier that way–they didn’t want to spend the time or the effort needed to discover, on their own, exactly what the Church taught. I think the same is true of most everything in life. It’s just too hard to examine your ideas.
I prefer to question and examine myself, rather than accept generalities that lead to specious propositions which, turn, influence my life. But, I’m introspective, by choice, to begin with.
I’ve said all I have to say, unless someone disagrees with me.
Can you run that by again one more time? I remember you talking about it, but it’s sort of become blurred with all the other comments and arguments throughout this thread.
Sure, but first let me tell you why. By the way, I was in error ^^^ when I said ‘Candidate Campaign’–it should read either Political Campaign or, simply, Campaign.
When our country was born, there were two basic social classes–the gentry and the rest of the people. There were sub-groups, of course, but they fell under one or the other of the basic two. Slaves were property rather than people, so they didn’t count.
The gentry are now those people with money, gentle-born or not. And the separation of the classes has been getting wider for decades, if not generations. This seems especially true in politics and has been throughout history. Now, however, the distribution of wealth seems greater than the separation of ‘class’ because we’re supposed to be a class-less society. Maybe that’s inevitable among all animals but we, in the Western World particularly, look to wealth for leadership, rather than birth.
Anyway, it takes money to campaign; yet, campaigning is supposed to be a way to get an individual’s political thoughts and ideas known to other people so they can choose which ideas they prefer. My proposal was to have contributions made into a general Campaign Fund starting at the lowest level of government–city, county/district, state–from mayor to governor. The money would then be ‘pooled’ and distributed equally among all the candidates for the top positions. As the campaign progresses, some of the candidates will either drop out or be dropped because of lack of interest from the public. Any unused funds would be returned and be re-distributed equally among the remaining candidates. After the vote is taken, any unused monies would go back to the fund and the process would.start all over again, working toward the next election. To me, something such as this would keep the ‘back room boys’ out of our elections. Everyone starts with the same amount of money. The special interest groups, the foreign interest groups, the elite super rich would still be allowed to contribute, just not to a person or a party. And they all could still fund their think tanks and other influence makers.
To make it fair for all, including the voter, the ‘start-up’ monies would need to be taken from every tax-payer and based on a percentage of their declared income. And the percentage should be small–and flat. It shouldn’t be an additional tax but, rather, a re-distribution of already existing taxes, to include campaign funding. After all, legislation affects everyone, not just a few.
That’s a rough outline of my proposal. It’s really only my thought for trying to make the various ‘voices of the people’ heard–perhaps to get people to think a little bit rather than to follow what a few have chosen for them to follow. Right now, we not only follow what our priests/pastors/legislators say, we allow our priests/pastors/legislators to be chosen for us, rather than by us.
For the sake of focus, I’m putting aside everything else to focus on this one line.
Why? Why would anyone ever drop out. Not only can the candidate channel the money into themselves and their allies, they are taking money from opponent by not dropping out. Lack of interest from the public is ill defined, at best. Short of another government agency, which would be manipulated by the political process, just like all the rest of them have, why would any one drop out?
This policy would lead to individuals running, with the goal of making money, not getting into office. Any “costs” to get into the field would effectively just be rent seeking.
I stand with it being a problem, yes, it fails in general, but it would also fail in the specific. Putting unlimited amount of resources into the attempt to find any idea is a bad idea. You are starting with the presumption that we could get reasonable results out of it. We may not be able to, and we must understand that as part of any process.
No, “the returns could be greater.” We have no way of knowing in advance what would be achieved by any study, else we would not need the study, or we would be conforming the study to our preconceived notions.
Science has never been value-neutral, science is practiced by humans, which are not value-neutral. I wish it were different, but history shows otherwise.
Reduction in the power of political players is still the best solution. Reducing the governments ability to be corrupted can only come at the cost of reducing its other abilities.
It never hurts to help!
Agreed.
While I agree to a point, I see the problems with peoples arguments, but often don’t have the answer. I do not hold that because only one solution is presented for a problem that it must be the one put in place. Too often, the unchallenged “solution” will only make matters worse. I do hold however, sometimes people are just being an ass… Which was not the goal, you seem like good peoples…
It could be argued that the harder pull is made by those with the greatest interest.
True, but not providing a lawyer to the defense does not prevent someone from gaining legal defense. <-Note: very much devils advocate here, I don’t for a second think that the government shouldn’t provide a base legal defense. It would fuck up the system to much for it to be otherwise. My problem with “providing” things comes in many other places though.
Thank you.
There is no specific problems with any studies… I even break from some Conservatives in some area’s of science and support such things as stem cell research. Problems arise in the same place as always, “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.” - P.J. O’Rourke
This is a good example of a correlation/causation fallacy. The research here is deep and detailed, and I must suggest, “Basic Economics” by Thomas Sowell, who has a better grasp, at the very least, along with citations and such evidence. It has been shown, that most upward increases in life style either started before minimum wage laws, or was unaffected by them. Further, a job, any job, is better for a person, both short term and long term, than no job.
Yes
Government has no reason or real way to understand all of the different aspects of a single market. It is wise to turn it over to people who have a incentive to do so.
No, though it is an aspect.
It is both. The companies have a reason to understand the market, and they have a reason to control the legislation. Paying for the regulations was an example of a possible outcome and is not always the case.
Just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean someone is not out to get me. Not everyone is playing checkers, chess is also a possibility… As is backgammon…
So the purpose of this would be to give more of a voice to the underdog candidates/parties–those who don’t have enough financing to even be recognized by voters.
I think if this were to work, you would at least have to inform the public of this intent. The idea of funding campaigning in general would probably seem pointless to a great many people unless the program came along with a bit of education about its purpose–then not only will people understand what the pay-off would be, but those who actually believe in the idea (people who want certain underdog candidates/parties to have a voice) would suddenly have an incentive.
Now, I was going to say we should have both–a general fund that gets divided equally and specific funds for particular candidates/parties if anyone wishes–that way, everyone’s happen… but then I realized, we can do that already: anyone can split up a lump sum of money among all the candidates/parties and donate the parts respectively. So for your idea to make a difference, I think we would have to make favoritist funding illegal.
Well, I never said anything about unlimited resources.
I don’t see how this holds. There are plenty of things that one can measure objectively when it comes to politics, economics, sociology, etc.–all things that such a science would have to have a hand in–the results of which (I think) would be quite enlightening. So long as we can be relatively sure that we can measure something and get some results, we still need to do the study to get those results (otherwise, what’s the point of doing any study?).
Furthermore, it’s not just a question of furthering our knowledge for its own sake, but scientific studies are often needed to settle debates. Take the feminist claim, for example, that there is a glass ceiling barring women from climbing the corporate ladder. How are we to tell the difference between whether this is a fact about the challenges women actually face in the work force vs. just a skewed perception being projected onto mail employers by certain disgruntled women who didn’t get the promotion they wanted and want to point the finger at the employer rather than their own lack of managerial skill? If we don’t settle these kinds of matters scientifically and objectively, we’d be advancing “fixes” to the system possibly based on superstition, hearsay, and prejudices. But as it happens, tons of studies have been done on just this subject and others like it (racism, homophobia, ethnicity, religious affiliations, etc.). These studies are double blind ones in which employers look over resumes and cover letters and select the most qualified applicant for the job. One group of employers don’t know the sex, race, ethnicity, etc. of the applicant, while another group does. The results are consistently as you would expect–there is a clear indication of prejudices on the part of employers against women, colored people, homosexuals, foreign ethnicities, etc. (probably unconscious for the most part as employers are often shown to be prejudiced against members of their own group) ← This is a pretty good indication that the glass ceiling effect is very likely to be real, and studies like the ones I just described help immensely in deciding on what courses of action to take in response to these kinds of debates.
Anyway, the more I think about this, the more I realize this is the kind of work that political scientists, historians, economists, and other social scientists do any way. I don’t think we need to throw extra money at some special program to make this happen.
How is measuring the ph level of some liquid a value based observation?
The first statement, I agree with. The second statement, I could probably agree with, but I’ll need some examples.
Same here, but if I like the end goal the proposed solution is aiming at, even if I don’t think the plan behind it is workable, I’ll say something to that effect (“I hope your idea works because the world would certainly be a better place if it does, but I don’t think it will because…”). This is one of the ways in which I recognize a willingness to cooperate on the part of others; this is not to say, however, that anyone has an obligation to respond this way, nor that if they don’t then obviously they’re against finding a solution, but it helps.
Of course, I agree with that last part (unless you’re living in Canada where you can mooch off welfare ). But if you and Sowell are right, I’d really like to branch off in this direction and ask about what did make for a better life for the working class around the same time that minimum wage was introduced. Off the top of my head, I would think the working class needs options–they need to be able to select a different job that pays better if the one they’re working in now doesn’t meet (or just meets) their basic living necessities. From what I was taught in school, the working class in America during the 1800s had no such options (actually, this was a far worse phenomenon in Europe than America from what I recall, but it was certainly also the case in America, wasn’t it?). Why was this? Was it a lack of free time? I mean, if you’re going to hunt around for another job, you need to take some time off from your present job to do so, and from what I understand, the majority of the working class had to work upwards of 16 hours a day, and if they had families, each family member, even children, had to work just to get enough money for the family as a whole to get by–so not even one member of the family could look for work elsewhere while the other continued working (<-- now that I think about it, this sounds like an exaggeration… but was it?). Was it a matter of a scarcity of jobs in the local market? As in, there was the big factory where everyone from a cluster of local villages went to work, and it was pretty much the only place where the money was–anything else, like a ma and pa shop, or a local school, just didn’t make enough money. Or was it just a low point in the market–businesses were suffering in general, not enough work to go around, and everyone just had to endure until the economy picked up. Or did the big factory owners collude together and decide not to compete–at least where workers’ wages were concerned–and that way they could work together to minimize the cost of business? These are all possibilities in my mind, some of which seem like they would need something like an enforced minimum wage to get out of, other of which seem like a problem natural market forces could eventually pull workers out of.
And while we’re on the subject, I’m wondering if we could keep in mind to touch on capitalism in the global market–here I think we can still see some of the issues concerning poverty due to too little pay for too much work (sweat shops, etc.). ← I believe this relates to what Liz was getting at.
I see. So the government, understanding that they’re no experts in, say, the fashion industry, wishes someone from the industry would help them out with their expertise, and if one such company comes along and offers to pay for the regulation, this introduces the incentive to actually allow them to take over (I would think money would have to be an incentive here as simply listening to the advice of some company might not persuade legislators to go along with that advice, even if they did realize they needed some expert advice to do the job properly… or maybe not, I’m not sure).
Ah, now I’m glad you mentioned this because it allows me to shoe in a point I’ve been wanting to make:
In discussion like this, it is important to watch out for what might happen in principle, and what actually will happen in practice. It’s easy to think of some catastrophic scenario that might follow some plan of attack, but to know whether or not that plan will actually work, it is far better to look at real-world examples–either currently going on somewhere in the world, or during some period in history. There was much fear, for example, leading up to the Civil Right Act that allowing black people the same rights and privileges as white people would tear the fabric of American life as we knew it back then. People imagined, for example, black men raping women as they went on dates, or white children getting sick from the germs and diseases that black children would supposedly infest the school water fountains with… well, maybe (theoretically, possibly in principle). But this is not how things turned out. Yet, at the time, there was no way to prove it conclusively. Sometimes–and this is my point–we just have to let a certain course of action pan out, and only after observing the results do we know what actually works and what doesn’t.
Of course, I’m not saying we ought to do this with any proposal put on the table. But I am saying that we can often, if we stop and think about it for a second, recognize a clear difference between whether some catastrophic, but hypothetical, consequence of some proposed action is likely to happen in practice, or whether it is highly unlikely but has been brought up only to point out certain logically possible ramifications. As philosophers, we like to think about the logically possible ramifications a lot… but when it comes to discussing practical solutions to real life problems, we sometimes have to switch gears and think about what’s actually likely to happen in the real world.
(I’m not say, Eric, that the scenario you brought up–big business taking over legislative regulations–is unlikely to happen–I know too little about this stuff to say with any confidence–and in fact, this brings up yet another point that I’d like to shoe in: once a logically possible scenario is brought to light, that very bringing to light can increase the likelihood of it happening. So we say that it’s logically possible for a big business to pay for the regulations of certain laws to be enforced upon the market that the business plays in, and just by saying it, the owner of some such business reads it and thinks “Say, now that’s not a bad idea!”–so he goes ahead and does it–then more business try it as they catch wind of the first business trying it–then more, then more–and soon, what began as a simple hypothetical thought experiment of a logically possible scenario that wasn’t likely to happen in the real world all of a sudden becomes incredibly likely in virtue of having become the norm ← now this idea itself might be one of those hypotheticals that isn’t likely to pan out in reality, but it also hints at the nature of human thought: once an idea is conceived, and spreads, it can change the playing field immensely).
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