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At 1 day ago, Camarohusky wrote:

The Lusitania was not provoked at all. Also, Germany's total war involved the intentional targetting of civilian ships.

Unprovoked? Probably "not provoked". But The Lousitania was masquering as a neutral vessel but did carry munitions [As found by divers]. And the germans had posted newspaper ads warning Americans that they were going to sink ocean vessels they suspected carrying munitions.

The attacks were not provoked in the common sense of the word, but they were motivated by the aforementioned violation.

http://www.worldwar1-history.com/Battle-of-the-Atlantic.aspx

Eugenics was an idea held by many prominent individuals in the academic community; It was the climate change of its day. At it's Zenith it was not a fringe position. The fact that an initiative to sterilize inferiors at this time should not surprise anyone.

It's also important to note that the baggage of racism had not been thrown into the left-right spectrum until after the second world war, when these views became much less popular for obvious reasons.

At 11 hours ago, Coop wrote: So the UK Chancellor George Osbourne has stood up and been delivering the budget for the UK this afternoon. Let's see what he's announced so far:

* Unemployment to fall
* Inflation to fall to 1.9% within 12 months
* Growth forecast for 0.8% this year; 2.0% next year

You know it is possible, accounting wise, to balance a budget without any spending cuts or nominal-tax increases? Simply set projections for employment, inflation, and growth such that you project more in revenues than in outlays.

If you do this each year, you can spend and tax at whatever level you please and never run a deficit.

At 2 days ago, Camarohusky wrote:

Actually, this section refers to 50 USC app. 2071(a)&(b). 50 USC app. 2071, an already existing statute, grants the President the power to take resources and services necessary to promote national security. All 201(6)(e) does is delegate this power the the secretaries of select departments. Americans aren't less free than they were in 1950.

It's interesting, if a number of obscure, abuse-potential and possibly Orwellian sounding laws were passed many decades ago, but never really utilized, how would we describe such a State. Perhaps it would be describe differently than if it

How would such a description compare with a country which had no piece of papers which specified things the government "Could not do" or explicitly stated that citizens had no rights, but the Government itself acted no differently than a 'constitutional state' elsewhere did.

It's reasons like that that lead me to agree with sentiments for state officials to simply announce that the constitution is null and void and they as government agents are entitled to act as they please. Not because I would anticipate them literally doing what they please or would want them to do so, but that such an announcement would give people a more "Rational-anarchist" view of the Government.

The most Libertarian [using the word loosely] of presidents is probably either Warren Harding, Grover Cleveland, or Martin Van Buren.

The most Authoritarian? Probably either Bush Jr., Wilson, or Lincoln.

I'm taking it as given that whether or not the authoritarian actions were 'just' or 'necessary' has nothing to do with trying to claim that they are less authoritarian than an unecessary or unjust action. One could argue that the Gulag was a necessary implement, but that has no bearing on its description as being either authoritarian or not.

At 4 days ago, Camarohusky wrote:

At 2 hours ago, SmilezRoyale wrote: Now, A Switch to a more evolutionary-based diet for Americans is not going to solve every kind of life-style induced health problem. And I hope I never argued that such was the case. It obviously won't address other kinds of problems like lung cancer.

You're the one focusing on the sugar. Again I was not trying to use it as a centerpiece, I was trying to give an example of a larger behavior. It is, as you might say "More fundamental" .

Reducing Obesity is an abstract benefit. The benefit exists, certainly, but It is not something that can be politically harnessed in the same way that benefits to certain agricultural and industrial groups can.

HFC is an EXAMPLE of what happens when "We" try to promote healthier lifestyles.

But i'm not going to get any more specific than that. I don't think making the same length response I made previously will be worth the time.

This is related to your comment about america being a car...

I understood your point the first time. Society is complex now, we need more technocrats.

This misses the point. ItâEUTMs not about knowing the science, itâEUTMs about 1. Knowing that the experts know the science 2. Knowing that the experts will act in accordance with the desire aimed at, itâEUTMs the classic quis custodiet ipsos custodes, but applied to technicians.

Even if you have no idea how to fix a car, the burden is still on SOMEONE to hire a car mechanic or car mechanics that are 1. Honest 2. Competent. These two things are each essential but insufficient without the other. And in order to do this, you cannot rely merely on faith, luck, or some archaic ritual.

I maintain that the system I described works better than any other [that I can think of] because unlike any other system I know, it does not dodge the issue of answering these two fundamental questions.

âEUoeGoing it aloneâEU is a mischaracterization of the system I described. And if that is how you describe it, It either means youâEUTMre not trying to understand or IâEUTMm not working hard enough.

ItâEUTMs not a matter of choosing whether or not to have experts. ItâEUTMs about Choosing how the experts are chosen.
We agree that experts are needed. The issue is choosing them. People HAVE to choose their experts SOMEHOW if they are to have them. Experts do not drop from heaven like Manna, and picking the first person who claimed to be an expert to act as the representative of all individuals for all future needs would be a nonsensical and dangerous proposition.

LetâEUTMs go through the possible selection methods.
Non democratic-statism, [any kind of enlightened despotism] answers this question by having experts assigned to the whole of society by an unelected despot. Have no proof ex-ante that the enlightened despot knows the right man for the job, and even if we assumed he did, we do not know if his selection of experts or the expertâEUTMs suggested course of action reflect what is in the collective best interest. And again, even if we KNEW for a fact what the answer to both of these questions were, if it turned out that the answer to either of them was âEUoeNoâEU [I.e. if the despot was incompetent, acting selfishly, or both] We would realize that we as a whole have no recourse against the despot short of revolution. A political system of this kind is unregulated; it is entirely dependent on the good will of the despot. This system, therefore, is faith based.

Even the dumbest politico grasps that in order for wise overlords to act on our behalf, there has to be some regulatory mechanism by which the self interest of state agents, and their technocrats, is curtailed or dealt with in such a way that self interest can motivate them to benefit others. The answer most of them give is some form of democracy, either direct or representative.

Now that enlightened despotism has been dispatched, whatâEUTMs left is a comparison between the democratic state and the method IâEUTMve proposed above.

Now I have my suspicions that the democratic state as it functions in most of the world is a rigged system, and political outcomes occur regardless of the votes that take place. I have my own reasons for believing why such a system can remain afloat for a long time. But IâEUTMm going to assume for the sake of simplicity that democracy works in the way it is said to in civics classes. [Note: And if I didnâEUTMt it would bode even less successful for democracy]

There are two relatively simple reasons why my approach, the polycentric approach, is superior to the democratic approach.

One, Democracy works with collective rewards and collective punishments. ItâEUTMs already been stated that no single voter has any reason to invest himself very heavily in politics. The voters interest falls even as the level of influence politics has over peopleâEUTMs lives grows. People vote on what appear to be non rational bases because they suffer no consequences from doing so, nor do they benefit in the least if they change their behavior.

Compare this with someone making a decision, and that decision *for the most part* affecting only them. It benefits them if they choose correctly, and harms them if they donâEUTMt.

Then thereâEUTMs the matter of getting information. Until perfect alternate reality simulators are created, trying to imagine what things would have looked like If, for example, Al gore had won the 2000 election, or any other election for that matter.

In reality, this is impossible. But what we can do is compare what different individuals experience when they make different decisions than people around them, and are permitted by the economic system to benefit or be harmed by those decisions. The knowledge they get from those decisions can then be passed to others through the price system, consumer reports, or by word of mouth.

In short. The democratic state gives voters no reason to seek information; it also denies them access to information because that information is not capable of manifesting itself. The polycentric approach gives each individual a clear stake in the outcome and the opportunity to affect that outcome, and also gives him access to a better array of information to base a decision on.

The process of *judgment* is no more individualistic than that of voting. And so other things being equal, the judgment process when benefits are accrued to individuals and a system of pluralism is endorsed, will be more informed and thus superior. Individuals are in a better position to âEU~regulateâEUTM the experts, and to regulate each other.

There are other reasons to oppose this system in certain areas [that I am aware of] but they do not relate to the reasons you gave.

Perhaps you have some insights that IâEUTMve overlooked, and that this political middle ground you call for can solve this issue. However I do not trust any centrist positions . IâEUTMll differ to someone else for explaining why

"Moderation is not an ideology. It is not an opinion. It is not a thought. It is an absence of thought. If you believe the status quo of 2007 is basically righteous, then you should believe the same thing if a time machine transported you to Vienna in 1907. But if you went around Vienna in 1907 saying that there should be a European Union, that Africans and Arabs should rule their own countries and even colonize Europe, that any form of government except parliamentary democracy is evil, that paper money is good for business, that all doctors should work for the State, etc, etc - well, you could probably find people who agreed with you. They wouldn't call themselves "moderates," and nor would anyone else.

No, if you were a moderate in Vienna in 1907, you thought Franz Josef I was the greatest thing since sliced bread. So which is it? Hapsburgs, or Eurocrats? Pretty hard to split the difference on that one."

In other words, the problem with moderation is that the "center" is not fixed. It moves.

1. Utopian Socialism âEU" The word as it was used in the early 19th century. The term Utopian socialist was bestowed upon individuals who had ostensibly fanciful visions of utopian, post-scarcity communities. Karl Marx called the first socialists utopian socialists. Look up, Saint Simmon, Fourier, and Robert Owen.
2. Anarchist-Socialism- Stateless societies where capital is owned by workers. Look up Proudhon and Benjamin Tucker. This was a late 19th early 20th century conception of the word.
3. State Socialism âEU" State control of the means of production. National socialism, âEUoeWar socialismâEU âEU" A term used by Lenin.
4. Democratic Socialism âEU" Government ownership of a few major industries, a welfare state, and a varying degree of regulation of private industry where it exists.

Utopian and Anarcho socialism are mostly of a conceptual nature, they were never implemented on a large scale [to my knowledge]. State socialism existed to varying degrees in a few countries, and democratic socialism can be thought of as simply a very diluted form of State socialism. Namely, it involves fewer incidences of state ownership, fewer controls on private industry where it is allowed to exist, and also a welfare state that cares less about equality and more about helping the poor. IâEUTMm not trying to make a continuum fallacy here; The fact that there may not be any discrete boundary between when something can be called one or the other does not imply the classification is invalid.

Communitarians simply refers to emphasis on the primacy of the Community as the unit of political and cultural consideration. ItâEUTMs god nothing to do with Marx. I use communitarianism and communalism interchangeably, although IâEUTMm sure a political scientist could probably tell me that thereâEUTMs a difference.

Beyond that I can't respond to this paragraph because I'm not entirely sure what you're saying.

The biggest conflicts between socialism and capitalism come in arenas where social and economic politics collide such as consumer protections, business regulation, and taxes.

I would IMAGINE that âEU~social and economicâEUTM politics collide MOST where the distinction between the two is the most fuzzy: namely, on the issues of various vices. Prostitution, Drug use, gambling. They are social in the sense that unlike more mundane economic activities, these issues have specific cultural weighting. To put it another way, religion in general and Christianity in particular never really had much to say about financial sector regulation. Although most religions discourage lending at interest, the opposition to it basically ended during the renaissance. Drugs, prostitution, and gambling, however, did not.

Extremely true.

I donâEUTMt think the issues of the past were necessarily less complex. âEUoeProblem solvingâEU is technical issue, but very rarely are the arguments about technical issues. People donâEUTMt really care about arguing for proposals about how to send a manned space craft to the moon, what they argue about are whether or not tax payer dollars are worth spending to send men to the moon. The issue of whether or not to send men to the moon isnâEUTMt necessarily less complex than the issue of the abolition of slavery.

ThereâEUTMs also the fact that the functional literacy of American is declining; it has been doing so gradually since the turn of the century but only within the last few decades has it really picked up steam. Americans understand fewer words now than they did in the 19th century. I blame this on public education in general and the whole word method in particular. IâEUTMm not going to make a case for that though, it may as well be something else that causes it. As such, politicians speak with the vocabulary of the least common denominator.

IâEUTMm inclined to blame this behavior on mass media and the education establishment. But above all, the fact that no individual bears any individual cost for making decisions with his heart instead of his head. And as a result, the system tends inexorably towards FEEL-GOOD politics.

Relevant to this issue is this great blog post. Mind you, it is extraordinarily long.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2008/02/democra cy-as-historical-phenomenon.htm

My response to the issue of experts has thus far only talked about the reasons why I think politics seems so intellectually 'devolved' Not about your criticism of my solution to this problem. I'll deal with that separately.

I'm going to respond to the first portion of your post. I'm about 1/3rd of the way through the second part.

At 1 day ago, Camarohusky wrote:

Those 4 ideas are good

The "Socialist" Ethos might emphasize community. But I consider it dangerous to treat as the first taxonomic criteria for any economic system to be the feelings evoked by that system. A person can justify socialism on the grounds that the capitalist system denies the individual his dignity by making him a cog in some industrial machine; this argument has been made before.

A person, though typically today's "desperate conservatives" justify their conception of capitalism on cultural grounds. Capitalism is American, and Socialism, however they conceive of it, is European, and thus "Un-American" -- The best example of this Rick Santorum. Santorum despises individualism yet would not classify himself as a socialist. Maybe Santorum is deluded, or maybe he's knows what he's doing and is just an opportunist, who knows?

Unfortunately this also makes Conservatives more of a threat to free[d] markets than progressives or socialists, because their conception of what a free market is, is most always based on a comparison between what exists at present, and some vague conception of the socialist "other" - despite the fact that there are governments which might classify themselves as 'socially democratic' yet those economies are no more controlled by state officials in that country than they are here; they simply involve simpler and more overt systems of wealth transference.

And of course the various grounds on which the same system can be promoted begs the question of; what is it exactly
that is being proposed? -- that is why I consider describing the actions of the central law agency --> the state, to be the most important in drawing distinctions. People can inject VERY different values into different systems, or inject the same values into different systems.

But this is sort of like classifying politicians on the basis of the the psychological undertones of their rhetoric. You run the risk of ignoring what activities governments are actually doing and instead focusing on the objectivity of feelings.

Also note that Individualism versus the community is not the same as freedom versus the community, unless you define freedom as freedom of the individual, in which case you're better off just using the individualism/community distinction.

Certain conceptions of freedom require the partial or complete abolition of other conceptions of freedom. You may have heard of this famous essay.

http://www.cas.umt.edu/phil/faculty/walton/Berlin2Concepts.p df

That third catergory fits right into my "the human element" idea.

The FDA case need not be corruption. The FDA agents may consider what they are doing to be a wholly righteous act, and in doing still violate what the relevant community feels is it's own rights, in favor of the whims of some distant Washington Bureaucrat, who in turn thinks he's doing the right thing.

In this case, I imagine the question is no longer one of whether the human element is at play, because you have two groups of people, one who thinks he's acting in the interest of the 'community' and another who thinks the OTHER is NOT acting in the interest of the community. The question then becomes 'What is the relevant community'? The Nation state or the local community? Or the international community? Which community is the socialist prioritizing.

My impression of most people who view themselves as Progressives

In soem cases, yes, but in others I would have to flip it around on you completely.

I would actually regard the left's positions on social issues [I am guessing that what is being discussed here is civil libertarianism, if you are talking instead about CULTURAL MARXISM, which i doubt, then I would agree that it is very much results oriented] to be the most PROCEDURE oriented of their ideas. A common right wing straw-man of the left-wing social-liberalism is that by tolerating certain lifestyles, they are encouraging them. While their may be some leftists who actually do actively oppose non-counter culture lifestyles and seek to actively promote various kinds of hedonism, the significantly more common leftist argument

In this context, leftists do not desire any OUTCOME; they don't care if the culture becomes generally hedonistic or not, they simply want people to have the right to choose what to do with their bodies.

But social leftist policy could also refer to the more pateralistic stance some leftists take on issues like, for example, fast food. In which case, yet again, that would be outcome oriented. They want to shape society in a certain way.

As for the thing about supply side economics, that simply amounts to one of a few justifications for a particular principle taken. There technically are plenty of people who approach the political question by asking âEUoehow does society best achieve XâEU where X is typically some âEUoeincrease the measure of material well being of societyâEU and then after hearing the arguments, conclude that system Y, in this case, Capitalism, is the answer to that question.

MOST people I know who defend the market do it primarily on the argument that interferences are immoral and most always cause more harm than good. Arguments suggesting that non-interference makes people richer is more like icing on the cake. For some people, like me for example, the roles are reversed. For most people, Free marketers included, Politics puts morality first, and utility second.

But like I said, there are also people who defend the market on cultural grounds, but these tend to be the most ignorant of all free marketers.

This comes to another of my points, and an extreme misnomer by many folks. Socialism is not Communism.

I never used the word Communism, I used the word "Communitarianism" or âEUoeCommunalismâEU

Communism has a legacy of referring to systems of very extreme state socialism [State socialism as defined by polical science]. Often times those practicing communism would call their system socialism, and for good reason. The practitioners of what we call communism were influenced by Karl Marx.
According to Marx. Socialism refers to a period of state ownership of the means of production, a dictatorship of the proletariat. After many generations the state withers away into what is called 'communism', a stateless, classless society where all is owned in common.

Which is another problem with political economy and classifications, the COMMUNISTS were not practicing communism, even by their own standards, they were practicing heavy state socialism but they never the less called themselves communists, because, at least in theory, âEU~trueâEUTM communism was the ultimate goal.

Socialism is a tricky word because the people using it can mean different things. [Just like the word Anarchy has four distinct meanings, chaos, communism, and statelessness, and the absence of all authority not derived from reason] There are typically four definitions for Socialism, IâEUTMm listing them both in the historical order in which they term was used

Continued on the next post.

At 4 days ago, Korriken wrote: as I sit here chewing on some nutritionally dubious substance I got from the bargain gin of the dollar store, I read about the allegations of voter fraud.

We all know Russia loves to overthrow its government from time to time. Putin knows it and Putin knows how to keep his subjects more or less under control. He will let them have their little election, he'll let them install a little opposition to make the people think their vote really counts.

It's similar in the US where most of the policy decisions are made by people who aren't elected at all. And who remain in office regardless of who wins and who doesn't. assuming fair elections in the US that is.

Unlike Obama or the congress, Putin, might have the actual 'final word' on the State policy of Russia. And in countries where this is the case, elections have to be rigged even more so than they are in the US.

I'm not criticizing you for criticizing a particular country. But I always enjoy it when particular informative instances can be used to understand bigger pictures. For example, the fact that elections are clearly a means by which the Government can control the people rather than the other way around.

The problem with most critics of this h4x0r-democracy is that they see it as a flaw rather than a feature of the system. If it's a flaw of the system, it can be fixed, presumably through the system. If it is a feature; only removing the system itself will suffice to bring about change.

So those who criticize the failure of democracy to live up to its expectations are often the biggest enablers of h4x0rdemocracy.

And if h4x0rdemocracy is the only kind of democracy that exists, and the only kind that can exist, we might as well just treat democracy as equivalent with it's h4x0rdemocracy aspect, and oppose democracy as both an acceptable paradigm of the world and as a political system.

But most people, unfortunately, are not willing to make that conclusion. And so they'll keep on voting and keep on petitioning for change, out of what the joker might have called some misplaced sense of self righteousness.

At 3 days ago, Camarohusky wrote: Instead of us arguing the negative, how's about you argue the affirmative first. Why should the drinking age be anything but 21?

In my mind a drinking age of any kind consists of a positive [active rather than reactive] intervention; it's not as if that drinking age was handed to us by the divines upon a crystal tablet, in which case it would be a kind of default assumption.

As such, the argument for the affirmative would be "Why should there be a drinking age at all, If Yes to the first question, what age should that be and why?"

So if I were to wear my progressive-conservative shoes and answer my own question, I could say that

1. On their own, people are not born inherently with the discipline to handle alcoholic drinks responsibly until they are older
2. Adult parents cannot be trusted to enforce limitations on the underage drinking

The second part, as an assumption for drinking ages is critical here in my opinion. Normally, we agree that children are born without any real responsibilities and near total prohibitions. [Children are born in a quasi-totalitarian state, as infants they have no real power until they are 1) physically capable of attaining it, and 2) are permitted to attain it by their parents OR are capable of overpowering their parents by some means] So parents impose restrictions on what children can do, and over time gradually lift those restrictions, and with those restrictions lifted impose responsibilities.

The rationale behind a drinking limit assumes this mechanism is either deficient in this particular case or deficient in all cases, and in either case would lead to the conclusion to ban alcoholic drinks for individuals below a certain age.

I understand why a drinking age could be seen as necessary, [I don't think the existence of a state is or was justified by the need for a legal drinking age] And critics of the drinking age being one thing or another need to understand that a drinking age of 21 doesn't imply that there aren't people younger than 21 who could drink SOME alcohol without it ruining their or anyone elses lives, nor does it imply that everyone older than 21 can drink alcohol without it ruining their lives.

That said...

Culture is more important than law in getting a desirable outcome. In European countries where alcohol is not taken as a Taboo and younger kids are taught by parents and peers 'all things in moderation'. Alcohol isn't a big deal because they don't MAKE it one.

One of the problems as I see it with a drinking age is that it has created a mystique in American culture about alcohol. People don't drink merely for pleasure but for social standing, people drinking alcohol simply for the sake of "breaking the rules." And then American culture ritualized the 21st birthday.

Eliminating the drinking age, or at least decriminalizing underage drinking might also encourage parents to play a more active role in

School teachers, government officials, and court intellectuals can convince young people that socialism is the wave of the future, that the new deal was the best thing since sliced bread, or that the words 'control' 'regulate' and 'protect' are always synonymous... [not implying that it teaches students any of these things per-say] But what they CANNOT do is imbue in young people a set of social values.

We learn our morals from those we seek to gain the personal [rather than formal] approval of. That means our parents, and our peers. We learn what is true from those who we see as experts, even if we don't seek their personal approval.

While marginally this program might discourage people from buying cars [very likely starting with the poorest of subjects] More likely it will simply encourage people to buy the cheapest cars available. These cars are presumably older models, used cars, which might actually have lower gas mileage than the newer vehicles. IâEUTMve never heard of governments trying to make ALL cars more expensive as a means of environmental protection, and I can theorize why this might be the case, but My point is that if they tried this in the manner described, it would be counterproductive.

We know from studies that lower income areas tend to have higher rates of obesity than upper income areas. This may be due to rich people exercising more, or it may be due to the fact that the kind of diet that the poor can afford is less conducive to health.

What this ultimately means is that the above policy decision is not weighing the possibility of either succeeding or failing, itâEUTMs weighing the possibility of either succeeding or making things much worse.

IâEUTMm not accusing you of holding any of these positions per-say, What I am saying is that any of the conceivable methods of bringing about the kind of result you want are what IâEUTMve shown them to be, rather ridiculous.

Oh and also....

I totally TLDR'ed this right now. Not in the in depth reading mood. (what can you say, it's a Sunday.) I will get back to it. If I don't, (most likely through forgetting) just harass me until I do. - that's from the Capitalism Socialism thread. If you've forgotten about it then this is to remind you. If you've been busy, I understand. I took 5 days before responding to your post here...

I don't know if anyone here has to call me to account for anything else on the issue of Health care. But if not I'm off to other threads to fight other battles. :P

Sorry for the uber late response, but I had a paper to write and I wanted nothing to get in the way. Unlike BBS posts, one Microsoft word page, double spaced, takes me about 4 hours to do if IâEUTMm lucky. So a 5 page paper takes 3 days to complete, at least.

At 13 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote:

You got it right.

Here's a quote for the article: "This discovery could have salient implications on the study of sugar addiction in humans. âEUoeAs far as humans are concerned, thereâEUTMs no good scientific evidence yet,âEU Hoebel said."

Yes, you start out with a hypothesis and often times you test the hypothesis out on non-human subjects. Hoebel is being careful and not saying that showing how what critics of HFCS say about HFCS is true for rats shows that it's true for humans. It's certainly more cautious than the kind of science that was used to show how fat causes heart disease.

However, I don't care if this is right or wrong. It still is nitpicky.

Now, A Switch to a more evolutionary-based diet for Americans is not going to solve every kind of life-style induced health problem. And I hope I never argued that such was the case. It obviously won't address other kinds of problems like lung cancer.

However, Obesity is directly linked to the body's insulin resistance, which sugar intake plays a key role. And if the new science which contests the lipid hypothesis is correct, it also does play the chief role in HEART DISEASE which is one of the major burdens on life-style induced healthcare costs. A movement away from sugars and starches won't eliminate diabetes or heart disease, but it will have an impact.

Unlike some people I have no grand vision of how âEUoeWeâEU [Read as the Government] Will bring about a healthier public. I do know, however, that the status quo is both politically profitable, and BAD in the perspective of encouraging healthy behavior.

My mentioning Carbs and high fructose corn syrup was also not about advocating a Government Crusade against these things. But to point out 1. The American Diet was healthier BEFORE large scale Government involvement in what the American diet ought to be. 2. The Diet the American Government recommended was, in large part, listened to, and with disastrous results. 3. Governments had, and have, a stronger incentive to tell people to eat things that Agribusiness and/or Vegan evangelists than what is actually.

Number three is absolutely the most important. My HFCS is part of a larger argument about the dangers in trusting the Government to be a force for positive lifestyle changes. Things like the Primal, Paleo, and Atkins diets might be incredible beneficial health effects but the Government has all the reasons in the world to oppose these diets. If it happens that these diets *are* wrong, then the Government being right is a matter of luck rather than something systemic.

As for your broad holistic approach, Exercise and eating less are intuitive measures for improving health. You'll have a hard time finding anyone who doesn't know that these things are good for you, though there will be disagreement as to how effective they are compared to the composition of diet. As such, if you want the Government encouraging people to do these things, you'll have to figure out some way of making people eat less and be more active.

The politically popular method of doing this is taxing sugary foods, but this is simply an attempt to make the foods the Government made artificially cheap expensive again. YouâEUTMre spending tax dollars to simultaneously make foods cheap to produce and then taxing them to make them expensive to buy. Now even when people donâEUTMt realize the link between carbs and sugar, most people realize that soft drinks, candy, etc. are Evil and so taxing them isnâEUTMt pure political suicide.

On the other hand, a âEU~nutritionally neutralâEUTM plan that simply makes people eat less is either going to be impossibly difficult to enforce, or politically suicidal, or both. And if it turns out that there is actually a real relationship between a foods price and its nutritional value, you may actually end up creating a program that encourages people to eat MORE junk in relative terms.
Beyond education, which as IâEUTMve explained is a waste of time because it tells people things they already know, the Government has two basic tools [or I should say, approaches] they can use to discourage eating. The first involves forcibly reducing the amount of food they are able to buy at the individual level, the second is fiddling around with supply and demand and making all food more expensive across the board, presumably through taxation. [Again weâEUTMre assuming nutrition Neutrality, We donâEUTMt know what kinds of food are healthy and which ones are not, so weâEUTMll just encourage people to eat less of everything and hope this works]
LetâEUTMs take the first approach. The government forcibly limits the amount of food people can buy or eat. I think you can understand why this is politically unpopular on multiple levels. Beyond the fact that limiting what food people can buy as an explicit policy would be incredibly unpopular with the general populace, which is of secondary importance, it is also politically unpopular at the level of interest groups, because any policy that cuts a consumer base for an industry would force that industry to contract heavily.
Sin taxes are different, if the sin taxes are on substances with a very inelastic demand [Either a practical necessity in the case of gasoline, or highly addictive in the case of soft drinks, alcohol, or tobacco] the incidence of the tax falls mostly on the consumers. [Sin taxes that fail to do this run the risk of eliminating the business entirely]
Even the most efficient method of enforcing this conceivable would still require quite a bit of effort. To the extent you donâEUTMt have government agents spying on households and supermarkets is the extent to which both households and supermarkets [restaurants too presumably] would greedily ignore the central plan and render the program pointless.
The alternative is to raise prices across the board, forcing people to eat less without having to send the food-gestapo to raid the refrigerators of households. Again weâEUTMll ignore political popularity. The problem with this method is that food typically consists of superior and inferior goods. When the price of all goods rises, the demand for superior goods may fall, but the demand for inferior goods rises proportionally or near-proportionately. So imagine if Steak is originally 20 dollars and hotdogs are 5 dollars, but the government doubles the price of both. Hotdogs are now 10 dollars and steak is 40 dollars. People might marginally buy less steak, but more likely they will engage in substitution, and buy hotdogs instead. Leaving their consumption unaffected.

Now if it turns out that the foods that are typically the cheapest, turn out to be the least healthy. What youâEUTMve done is encouraged people to increase as a proportion of their diet the foods they SHOULDNâEUTMT be eating. Now we started with the assumption of nutritional neutrality as a matter of policy, this doesnâEUTMt imply that nutrition doesnâEUTMt matter; only that we donâEUTMt know what is nutritional and what is not; hence is the idea that the Government ought not encourage one diet over another. But in trying to make all food more expensive, the government DOES encourage a certain kind of diet.
For example, imagine a program aimed at reducing the environmental impact of cars on global warming by making cars more expensive across the board.

Continued on the next post.

At 3 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote:

At 19 minutes ago, SmilezRoyale wrote: Much of the addiction to junk foods is due to the addictive nature of Corn Sugar. Corn sugar is used instead of Cane sugar because it's cheaper, and it's cheaper due to corn subsidies. If the subsidies were removed, and/or if a tax was levied on corn sugar, cane sugar or some other kind of sugar would probably become more prevalent.

I have heard so much food conspiracy bullshit like this that I would need a reputable source before I bvelieve this for one second.

Which claim, the one about Subsidies to corn growers or about the affects of corn sugar in particular?

Sorry if i prove to be wrong, but I'll assume you're referring to the latter claim. Since I've always considered the corn subsidies to be common knowledge, at least among nerdy politico's like me.

I'll assume that Princeton University is reputable enough for you.

http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2008/12/12/22428/
http://www.princeton.edu/main/news/archive/S26/91/22K07/

The first article deals with the addictive effects of HFCS, the second with it being worse in terms of weight gain.
"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."

Farm subsidies are important. A large able agricultural industry allows a nation as large as the US to be as independent as possible when it comes to food.

I can't address this point because I'm not really sure why you think they are necessary. We don't share the same economics, so you'll have to enlighten me. Sorry :(

The education has been wholly misguided. Education has focused on nitpicky overly scientific shit that has a propesnity to only be good for a decade. The government needs to focus on portion control, exercise, and an effort to get people to pay attention to what they eat.

What we eat and how much we eat are impossible to truly separate. The nutritional content of the food we eat sends messages to our brain about our appetite. This is why insulin is so important.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNYlIcXynwE

This video basically explains it, and it explains why Insulin resistance is NOT a nitpicky solution. People are eating more because their diet demands it. It *is*, at least in part, a matter of sugar addiction.

It's the constant intake of sugar into the bloodstream that causes the insulin resistance most Americans have, among other problems.

At 20 hours ago, djack wrote:

No one is going to change their habits. I dare you to find a smoker who doesn't know about the health risks, you get bonus points if it's a young smoker who had a chance to learn about the risks in school and still managed to get addicted to nicotine because they didn't know it caused cancer. Everyone in America knows about the health problems that come with obesity but that hasn't stopped most of them from eating like pigs on a regular basis with little to no exercise to counter their caloric intake. You're talking about preventative health care like it can be done with a brief ad campaign explaining how people can live healthier. There's plenty being done to teach people healthy living and most just ignore it, you can't force it on people without outlawing the things they like and then people would complain about their rights being violated. What more do you think can be done for preventative health care that would work?

Much of the addiction to junk foods is due to the addictive nature of Corn Sugar. Corn sugar is used instead of Cane sugar because it's cheaper, and it's cheaper due to corn subsidies. If the subsidies were removed, and/or if a tax was levied on corn sugar, cane sugar or some other kind of sugar would probably become more prevalent.

However we can't expect either of those things to occur. Federal farm policy is designed to enrich farmers and little else. What Governments HAVE been doing is taxing certain foods that the government deems unhealthy, such as soft drinks. But this doesn't address the issue that the substances themselves are still addictive, and the only way to genuinely reduce the use of these

As for education, it kind of depends. I actually think early Government efforts at educating the public in what kind of diet they should eat were acceptable; the problem was that the diet they were educating was the wrong diet. In the 1970's the started telling people that fat was causing heart disease, and that people should eat starches and grains, i.e. sugar. The amount of fat as a percentage of the average american diet has fallen, but the percentage of sugar and starch has risen.

It's the constant intake of sugar into the bloodstream that causes the insulin resistance most Americans have, among other problems.

At 1 hour ago, fatape wrote: Preventative healthcare is still health care , if americans don't live as long because they eat too many big macs then it is still reflective the health care of a nation.

In a government run system their is actually incentive to promote preventive care since it is much more expensive to cure an existing condition then to prevent it in the first place. In a private system the opposite is true, if your not sick the health care industry dose not make money off of you.

When you say "expensive" I ask "Expensive for whom?"

Nothing your government does is particularly expensive for the the programs managers. This should be glaringly apparently in most matters that Government everywhere have gotten their hands into. It doesn't matter to them whether a war costs 10 billion dollars or 10 trillion dollars because these costs, if they affect them at all, only do so indirectly. [It might 'hurt' their reputation if the public is anti-deficit minded,

The other problem with your statement is it ignores the aspects of diffused costs and concentrated benefits. Ultimately, all costs for Government/State programs are born by Taxpayers. Each individual has certain healthcare costs which are placed upon the State, and the state conscripts resources from individuals on the basis of their income bracket [as is the case of income taxes] or on some other basis. most USUALLY this basis/criteria is entirely separate from the individual's actual consumption of healthcare services. We can assume this due to the fact that the whole institution of State-Controlled healthcare is based upon a personal aversion to the idea of individuals paying for their own healthcare in any meaningful and direct sense.

What this means is that the high cost of any single individual's own health coverage is not going to be felt by them directly. The personal benefit to them in living in a way that they enjoy but entails higher healthcare costs is necessarily going to be larger than the small, possibly non-existent increase in taxes.

You can then see how problems would emerge when EVERYONE follows this logic, it's a classic case where individual rationality doesn't lead to group rationality.

One problem is we live in a world of perpetual moral-hypocrisy where people feel it's evil for insurance companies to offer discounts for those who live healthy and put premiums upon those who have done the opposite. Yet these same people advocate either 1. The Government doing the same thing in terms of monetary incentives and punishments or even more extreme advocating 2. Outlawing of certain unhealthy behaviors.

With any transaction you're going to have one or more parties that aim at minimizing the amount they have to pay to get something, and naturally, the party that aims to maximize the amount that they get in selling something. It would be illogical to allow the latter party to be put in charge of 'controlling' the costs born by the former party. But no one advocates this.

The ones ultimately with the burden of controlling the costs are the consumers themselves... Or Taxpayers in the case of a [presumably?] democratically run centrally planned health care scheme. But neither group in either case has much of a reason to do any real cost control because the system of payment is disconnected from the system of receiving due to the structure of third party providers.

If you think about it, health insurance might make sense in the case of some random accident causing harm to life and limb. But it doesn't make sense in the case of most other matters of healthcare. Namely diseases that are associated directly with certain controllable behaviors.

This mechanism explains why, for example, the price of Cosmetic Surgery, in spite of increased demand and increasingly sophisticated technology, has been falling relative to the consumer price index. [Most healthcare costs have risen well above the CPI]

But all of this economics and logic is moot I suppose. Healthcare is and never really was a technical issue; it's a moral issue, nay a "religious" issue.

At 4 hours ago, adrshepard wrote:

At 13 minutes ago, SmilezRoyale wrote: It seems to me like Decades of intervening in the politics of other nations by the US Government has engendered a massive sense of entitlement by Americans to meddle in other countries business.

What do drug addicts, abusive spouses and parents, and third-world despotisms have in common?
They all say the same thing when confronted: "none of your business."

We get it. You hate the US. There's no need to keep reminding us about it.

USA and America are words that refer to three things, most typically. One, a name given for a piece of land. Two, a group of people living on that land. Three, a club of sociopaths. I only really "Hate" the third category.

And it's not even as If I hate USFG.CO in particular. I hate all States of all forms and in all places at all times; It just so happens that USFG.CO is MY government, and so, out of pure self-interest, USFG.CO is the natural object of my ire. Perhaps if this we were still a colony of the UK I'd be ranting about the Queen or the prime minister.

It's funny though. As reflexive as many left-progressives are in defending their pet programs, only Neoconservatives treat criticism of the USFG as a near-PERSONAL insult.

But yeah I've heard this before. It's kind of like implying that people who are skeptical of statist anti-poverty programs are pro-poverty. We merely suspect that the program will spend a ton of money with results worse than the initial problem intended to be solved.

Finally, why don't 'we the people' Start mitigating our own Governments abuses, [which seem to be growing by the day] before "we the government" try to remake the rest of the world in the name of an ideal that we're continually reject domestically.

It seems to me like Decades of intervening in the politics of other nations by the US Government has engendered a massive sense of entitlement by Americans to meddle in other countries business. Mind you I believe what the US Government does is largely a separate and autonomous from what people Generally want, even IF those two things happen to coincide at times. Just as was the case with the Romans and the British.

To illustrate the point, just IMAGINE if I made a thread that casually advocated the Chinese Government invading the United States in order to impose austerity, so that US debts to east Asian nations can be successfully repaid.

Hm... now that i think about it, that's actually not a bad idea.

So as an example, suppose youâEUTMve gotten some illness. You consult your doctor and he gives you a medical explanation of your problem, which you either do not fully understand, or do not understand at all. He then recommends a particular drug as treatment. YouâEUTMre not an expert in medicine, how do you know your doctor is right? How do you know heâEUTMs not prescribing you something which could kill you? Or is simply more expensive compared to treatments which could have the same medicinal effect but at a fraction of the price? You know the doctor went to medical school, but how do you know the school is any good?

The statist solution is a vertical and authority based approach. Make the state the ultimate decider of who is an expert and who is not. I.E Lawmakers or bureaucrats. But this begs the question of how the lawmakers know? They know because theyâEUTMre experts? How do we know theyâEUTMre experts then? âEU" In ancient times the answer was that the King was divine, or semidivine, or chosen by the divine.

The democratic-statist solution is to have the same vertical solution with the state being the direct decision maker, but the stateâEUTMs lawmakers are voted upon democratically, which then just bounces the problem back to how people know whoâEUTMs the expert and who isnâEUTMt.

Both of these are NON-answers. They ultimately do not solve the problem, they simply shift burden of solving the problem on someone else. Our conception of the state as wise and powerful only leads us to feel like the problem has been solved. I have more respect for people who see through this ruse and say that there is no solution and that weâEUTMre all doomed than people who think that this in any way solves the problem.

The non-state solution is the horizontal, information-reputation, approach, and, while not perfect in the sense of achieving omniscience, it does get closest in my view to solving the issue.

LetâEUTMs go back to the issue of the doctor. Why trust his/her bonafides? And even if the bonafides are good how do you know heâEUTMs not pushing some overly expensive cure?

First, the doctor is engaged in repeat business, individuals at a certain point will know from experience if their advice has actually served them well. Alone as a single individual, the information from personal experience would generally be insufficient to make a good judgment; the benefit comes when this information is made available by some formal or informal means, and used to inform the decisions of others. Experts confident that they are both well informed and honest will try whenever possible to make the larger volume of positive feedback on their work available to any potential clients. And third party agencies, realizing that there is a demand for honest testimony, might try to facilitate collecting this information itself. [Think angies list]

Institutions that train and qualify specialists will also have a reason to maintain the integrity of their training programs. People who go to MIT do so because they know that getting a degree from their institution carries weight. It carries weight because businesses are more impressed by MIT graduates than other institutions, and they are more impressed because they know from experience that MIT produces good graduates. As Soon as this pattern changes noticeably, the MIT label carries less weight, and students will not be as willing to pay for an MIT education.

This approach is not authority based in the sense that it does not defer judgment to any single individual or group. It requires only that individuals have a direct personal interest in both acquiring information about a specialist when they need it, and providing information about specialists when they have it. Hence the difference between having reputation and having authority.

You can also see how information distributing need not be testimonial or even intentional. When people choose to patronize one person or agency over another, it automatically sends signals to participants in that market that one agency is doing something right, and another is doing something wrong. Price signals convey information about the satisfaction with a given institution.

This approach is also not perfect. If an entire field of study is questionable and everyone thinks otherwise, youâEUTMll have problems. For example, economists who fail continually to provide accurate predictions with econometric models for private businesses can easily point to the fact that all other economists are making identical mistakes, so the flaw is not with them persay. And technically they are correct, the problem is in econometrics itself. One could make similar claims about psychology. When the whole of society suffers from a collective delusion, thereâEUTMs little that anyone can do. But Governments, particularly democratic ones, have a habit not only endulging in these collective delusions, but solidifying and codifying them. The best example of this I can think of is the college system. I agree there are some colleges that are better than others, but thereâEUTMs also the inability of many people to separate the smartness of the college from the smartness of the students. Do good experts come from Harvard because of the school or because those young adults were born on the right side of the bell curve? Hence the misconception that all a child needs to succeed is an expensive college degree. And the Government worsens the situation by having its authority figures repeat this mantra, but worst of all they encourage overleveraging students with debt, and they also frequently hamstring the ability of businesses to forgo the entire corrupt college system by issuing tests of their own.
This solution probably does not impress or satisfy you, particularly because when we see the failures of certain experts to live up to expectations, we immediately assume itâEUTMs because of some inherent flaw in any system that doesnâEUTMt rely upon the state, rather than a result of some intervention.

This Youtube illustrates a similar principle working in a slightly different context. I highly recommend it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=79ZosnxGKgk&feature=relmfu

So what happens when it is agreed that a single agency, i.e. State, can decide that Mr. X is an expert and everyone should, and therefore, MUST take his advice, be it health advise, car advise, or macro-economic counseling. Well Mr. X, by law, faces no genuine opposition, and thereâEUTMs no way for other individuals to see if alternatives to Mr. XâEUTMs ideas are better. By virtue of legal monopoly, Mr. X is accountable to no one, and it is fanciful to think that sort of position will not be abused.

Worst of all, they give the false impression of protection.

Lastly thereâEUTMs also the possibility that our education system was designed early on to make us very dependent upon the words of experts.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/gatto6.1.1.html

But even without this possibility there would still need to be a âEU~division of laborâEUTM in knowledge.

IâEUTMm sure you have misgivings, but guessing what those might be and trying to address them will only make this post longer.

Sorry for the delayed response. I would have had it done an hour sooner, but my computer shut down... so Now IâEUTMm writing my longer-than-usual responses on microsoft word.

At 7 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote:

It doesn't fit because it doesn't belong there. .

IâEUTMve broken up my response to this in several paragraphs. IâEUTMm still not happy about how I tried to explain myself. I apologize in advance; itâEUTMs a very long read.

I want to start by developing my own way of trying to box the capitalism-socialism issue. IâEUTMm thinking maybe if you see how I view the system, you might understand why I take issue with yours, [and possibly help you to correct me if I turn out to be wrong]

An action taken by an individual or a group of individuals [community?], in a political-economic context, can be described as either Individualistic or Communitarian. But it can likewise be described as Coerced/Coercive or Voluntary. When you combine these you get a four way matrix similar to how dungeons and dragons create a 9 way matrix with Good-Neutral-Evil, Lawful-Neutral-Chaotic. HereâEUTMs just an example of each kind, in a somewhat political context, to solidify the concept.

Voluntary Individualistic âEU" You live in a country where there are no drug laws, you decide to smoke pot in your own residence for leisure.

Voluntary Communitarian âEU" A lightning bolt sets fire to a neighborâEUTMs home and burns it to the ground. Without the aid of tax funds, the local town raises a charity fund to pay for supplies, and able residents volunteer time to rebuild the house.

Coercive Individualistic âEU" Very rarely are government interventions actually self-described as NOT being for the common good of some sort. Especially in the âEU~age of democracyâEUTM. Outside the sphere of government, a common mugger can be thought of as a coercive individualist, and many people view Government officials as common muggers. My point is that even if the motives of a government policy are in fact not aimed at community benefit, they very likely will be cloaked as such to make them palatable. But we can imagine a situation where a law is written where the lawmakers have individualistic intentions but they lie about them for practical reasons.

Coercive Collectivist âEU" The Government compels all inhabitants of its territory to pay into a social insurance program.
Not that I suspect this will become an issue, but do not confuse individualistic with selfish and collectivistic as selfless. Collectives can be selfish in the context of interacting with other collectives, for example, wars. Individualists can be selfless in the sense that someone might retreat from the world for spiritual reflection. Etc.

Finally, it should be noted here that these descriptions do not describe actions based on their outcomes, but their Character in the case of coerced/voluntary and their expectations.

When I used the FDA example I wasnâEUTMt trying to throw an anecdote at you, I wanted illustrate situations where neither freedom nor community is achieved. I should have probably also mentioned a situation where the two aspects cross.
My impression of most people who view themselves as Progressives, Socialists, [Modern American] Liberals, is that they tend to associate a system with its intended results [realized or not] rather than the procedure or structure that brought about those results. So for example, material Equality, fairness, opportunity, various positive rights, these are all desired results. People who describe themselves as "pro market" - usually associate a system with its procedure or structure. For example, protection of property rights, equality of moral worth [sometimes called equality under the law], and the emphasis on permitting peaceful exchange are not 'outcomes' per-say but desired structures. Rightly or wrongly these procedures are believed to bring about outcomes which are by general standards good, but the specifics of those outcomes will be varied and not wholly predictable. The socialist might ask âEUoeIs it for the good of the communityâEU âEU" The Capitalist asks âEUoeIs it voluntary?âEU

Trying to Explain the free market is tricky precisely because thereâEUTMs the prescriptive aspect and the descriptive aspect. At the base of it, is simply the idea that social interactions should avoid compulsion between individuals whenever possible, a concept that seems intuitive when dealing with private individuals, and less intuitive when talking about âEU~the public sphereâEUTM. Things like market competition, labor economics, private property, etc. are descriptions of what we can best estimate to occur under a set of conditions. Of course we can also describe
Another element of difficulty is the fact that this definition of a free market has very little to do with Capitalism as the word was first used under Marx, although it is much closer to what I believe free market thinking is trying to get at. What is private ownership? Ownership by individuals instead of groups? What about monarchical ownership? Is ownership by a âEUoeDemocratic stateâEU REALLY collective ownership? Is it even possible for a state to be democratic [as defined, embodying the will of âEU~the peopleâEUTM]? Was the property of the soviet union âEU~private propertyâEUTM or âEU~public property?âEUTM, or was it neither? If so, is the concept of public/private property misplaced or even meaningless?

Not all free-market people, even people who are extremely free market, are political individualists. But I think the reason many of them are is due to the fact that if socialism is embedded in collectivistic language, aimed at communitarian goals, people who oppose the state may feel the need to counter that language with individualistic language and individualistic goals.

Also, I will say that, since Freedom is often thought of as âEU~An absence of social controls upon individualsâEUTM itâEUTMs easy to see how Freedom can be thought of as something of an âEU~anti-communityâEUTM position. But that view of freedom is much too broad, the emphasis is GENUINELY on what is the STATE doing to individuals and groups.

Yes and no.

I think youâEUTMre close with the comfort and waste of time. ThereâEUTMs truth to the observation that if the sky isnâEUTMt falling, people tend not to ask questions, and we only think about the nature of things when they change.

I think youâEUTMre close with the comfort and waste of time. ThereâEUTMs truth to the observation that if the sky isnâEUTMt falling, people tend not to ask questions, and we only think about the nature of things when they change.
However, itâEUTMs not technically, or rather, itâEUTMs not necessarily the case that learning about the way the world works is a waste of time. What my Government does will directly and indirectly have a massive impact on my life. The problem is that me, as an individual living in a modern liberal democracy, have a functionally zero percent chance of influencing political elections, let alone political outcomes in the forms of laws. Hence, IâEUTMm a prisoner of circumstances, and most individuals not inherently interested in social science would rightly deem it irrational to spend any considerable time learning about these things.

On the issue of specialists, you have to distinguish between knowing the facts, and knowing who knows the facts. In other words, even if you defer knowledge to experts, their expertise isnâEUTMt something anyone can assume at the outset.

Continued on the next post

At 2 days ago, Camarohusky wrote:

It may also fit into the "large milk manufacturers have used their money to get the government to act on their interests and no one else's" third catergory of flat out corruption.\

I was aiming for the third one, but corruption does not seem to fit on your sliding scale.

Your sliding scale is certainly one that's more comfortable if you live in today's society. Nobody would want to believe, if they felt they had no real choice in the matter, that any loss of freedom on their part wasn't exchanged for some greater social benefit which they would have bargained for if they had that freedom in the first place; even if they weren't made to believe beforehand that such was necessarily the case.

But the human mind can only recognize about 150-300 people as actually being Human, and that was the scale at which our ethical conception of communitarianism is built around. It did not evolve to accommodate cities of millions of people or trading networks involving billions of people. My impression of people is that the idea of initial acquisition and active use [otherwise known as the homesteading principle] and the legitimacy of voluntary exchange between two individuals are two things which most people intuitively regard as 'legitimate' and 'acceptable', However, gross inequalities of income, and a world where the effects of one's productive efforts are not visible to any single individual
are not things that are innately normal to us.

My guess is that this communication impulse is the main drive behind socialist and communist thinking, it is also likely do to the fact that people project parental authority onto the Government because very few people take the time to look at the institution itself with very much scrutiny. While a I believe. But when people are dealing one another in such an indirect form as today, concepts like the prisoners dillema, rational ignorance, the profit motive, corruption, they are all real and have to be dealt with.

At 13 days ago, Camarohusky wrote: It ain't as easy as you think.

A better dichotomy, and one the puts two important values at odds, is freedom v. community.

They are both rife for abuse, and both have severe downsides.

Although, How does the situation of FDA Agents sending heavily armed troopers into an amish farmers shop and arresting him for selling raw milk fit into this dichotomy exactly?

At 15 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote:

Come on Smilez, you are way smarter than this.

He was like "revolution!!! Fuck yeah!!! Blood!" and I merely was indicating that I doubt his sincerity to that ideal. Furthermore, had I been a little meaner, I would have pointed out that he likely says this because he thinks it's cool, not because he has any reason to revolt or would be willing to live with the negative consequences of that revolt.

Looking back, I'd forgotten your statement was in response to "I hated patriots" not "maseman33", the latter who simply said to give anarchy. [Still not sure what he means by that] A try.

Usually when I hear about violence and [statelessness] Anarchy it has to do with discussions about dealing with foreign invasions, not actually overthrowing a monocentric legal regime.

So I was reading too heavily into what you were saying. Sorry.

At 17 hours ago, Camarohusky wrote:

I was trying to be nice,

So you're statement was meant to be an implicit conclusion about his social background, which could be inferred by a conclusion you arrived to by mere assertion, which then somehow either discredits the position or [more productively] helps to change the person's mind on the issue? That's hardly better.

For every ideology you can usually divide it into two groups, the reflexive and often mindless supporters of a particular doctrine, and those who have developed a positive theory of 'things' and have come to a particular conclusion. For example, Neoconservatism. You've got the useful idiots [such as myself when I was 13] Who argue that anyone who disagrees with The republican party in general and bush in particular is un-American, and supporting the occupation of foreign countries was the patriotic thing to do. You've also got the neoconservative intellectuals.

This is especially true in the case of fringe ideologies. Many people who hold them are either eccentrics, or have developed strong reasons in favor of them despite what people around them say.

People who hold mainstream ideologies might very well be correct, and when they express their views they sound more respectable than the "fringe elements" But they are also more likely to be simply regurgitating talking points that are given to them by television mouthpieces.

And there's obviously a continuum. In my opinion I provide better arguments than most in favor of non-state solutions to problems which usually people think need the state to solve. But i'm not an expert.

Sometimes the motives of those two groups are different, sometimes they're not and the 'smart' group simply has more information and better logic to justify their 'ism'. With Neoconservatism I imagine that the intellectuals and stupid people differ considerably. But that's besides the point.

I never assume from the outset that anyone who makes a statement that sounds indictative of a particular ideology belongs to the idiot camp. And even if they do, it is often the case that people from the idiot camp of X-ism can be reasoned enough to either change to the smart-camp of X-ism, [after at least learning enough to defend their position]

In other words. You could have just said to him "Who will build the roads under a condition of Anarchy" [However it is defined] But instead your response consisted solely of"Your position is absurd, I don't have to provide a single explicit reason why, and you are of a childish mentality"

It's only slightly more sophisticated than me saying 'Socialism doesn't work because it doesn't work'. It might very well be true, but I'm sure you've thought about this issue long enough to share more than a high handed, and unsubstantial dismissal.

Again, I didn't take his pithy post as supporting any political position at all. I was doing nothing but ridiculing there.

At 34 minutes ago, Camarohusky wrote:

At 34 minutes ago, Ihatedapatriots wrote: Governments don't like to lose control. It's gonna be bloody, but I'm down.

No you're not. You'll lose you cozy digs and your access to the internet. Also, the food intake you get will be dramatically reduced. I dare you to give that up and not regret it.

Whatever HIS definition of Anarchy, your argument is rather disingenuous. It refutes a political position with the given assumption that it can't function [as defined, providing certain goods necessary to modern standards of living, civilization, etc.]. It's only slightly more sophisticated than me saying 'Socialism doesn't work because it doesn't work'. It might very well be true, but I'm sure you've thought about this issue long enough to share more than a high handed, and unsubstantial dismissal.

And of course the same thing applies to everyone, whether one is arguing against [however you define it] Socialism, capitalism, communism, or anarchism, I am absolutely sick and tired of people giving talking points and anecdotes as if they're new and unheard of before.

Now if someone actually Advocates "Anarchy" they either 1. Believe certain essential goods [whether physical, or 'good' as an actual state of affairs to be desired] can be provided adequately, or even the most effectively, under a state of anarchy 2. Believe certain goods are not necessary or desirable. The same is technically true of any "Ist" of an "Ism"

So for example, Mr. Anarchist can either believe that effectively functional national defense can be provided in a state of anarchy, or can believe that national defense, as a good itself, is unnecessary.

I kinda had more to say, but i'm just not up to it.
____________________________________________________________
________

Oh I'm in favor of the middle ground. That must mean that I understand the minutiae of both the laissez Faire and socialist camps and have rejected both of them after deep reflection.

Or perhaps it's because the middle ground is the position I was taught in school. Who knows.

End Sarcasm.

Well I've heard the middle ground argument before, plenty of times. And I imagine aside from it simply being the middle ground, it's appeal comes from the common understanding of the history of the industrial revolution, and the common understanding of the history of the soviet union. And since we live in a mixed economy right now, and things do not appear to be completely dysfunctional.

The main issue of debate, it seems, is how far are we presently on the sliding scale between 'the state' and 'the market' Two terms i haven't defined admittedly. And secondly, how far should that scale be pushed one way or another. Usually this centers on how much of a market is left, how is this market portion to take the blame for what social problems remain, and how far in the direction of the state should society be pushed.

I actually would like to make a separate thread on this issue alone, but Democracy really IS the glue that holds socialism together as not merely a plausible but also desirable state of affairs.

That is to say, the idea that the State does, or should, represent 'the will of the people' in a meaningful way, is really the one way one could justify a kind of society

If someone simply argued that some random group of people should be given unilateral control over the means of production, you would not take them seriously.

This also makes sense because the only way 'public' and 'state' control of the means of production could be used interchangeably is if one thought that one implied or even necessitated the other.

But anyone who thinks about it long enough and unbiased enough understands that so-called publically minded institutions, and institutions with the powers of the state are mutually exclusive.

And only an idiot, would consciously PRESUME any random group of individuals, especially those with state-powers, to have benevolent motivations simply as such. Such a presumption would only be reasonable with the idea of a democratic process ensuring that state agents behaved benevolently.

In a sense, democracy or the presumption of it existing, is the only thing that differentiates socialism from mass-slavery at the hands of a political elite in the guise of sovereign governance.

There are some very radical principles that can be drawn from this fairly simple observation, but i'll leave it like this for now.

At 51 minutes ago, BUTANE wrote: You need to remember that libertarians don't think rationally. They live in a dream world where the free market will provide for all and that government is non-existent. They seem to forget the industrial revolution where the free market provided sweatshops for all. I'm not surprised that when presented with a rational argument that is contrary to their rooted beliefs that they would refuse to accept it (even if it means more government spending). You are not going crazy, you were just arguing with crazy people.

Your anecdotes are not germane to the topic.

The issue is why a Libertarian would support what is clearly one government program to fix the issues created by another. My impression to what the OP was saying was why it made sense to support additional spending to try vainly to mend a program, especially if you didn't support the original program to begin with.

A Libertarian might want to avoid government funds being wasted on druggies. But I imagine, so too would a progressive, or a conservative. I would imagine a liberal would particularly be interested in making sure Welfare funds are spent properly, since they are not simply motivated to ensure that lower income folk 'survive' in some simple sense. They see the state as an instrument to mold them into the kind of citizens that can succeed, reason and evidence notwithstanding.

Milton Friedman was one of the people, for example, who came up with the idea of a negative income tax. Namely, a minimum amount of money per year that the government gives each citizen. And then any income they earn is subject to a relatively low flat tax. That minimum will allow lower income folk to get by, but otherwise society and the taxpayer is 'off the hook' for their welfare.

Blank-slate social-engineering types who see education as the key to making anyone into anything they so desire, might view Milton's cold-calculating-efficiency-in-government-welfare as too narrow.

Also.

You need to remember that Statist don't think rationally. They live in a dream world where the state will provide for all and that greed and abuse are non-existent. They seem to forget the early 20th century where the state provided wars, famine, and political prison camps for all. I'm not surprised that when presented with a rational argument that is contrary to their rooted beliefs that they would refuse to accept it (even if it means more freedom). You are not going crazy, you were just arguing with crazy people.

I'm not saying that to make a point about anything generally. And I don't want to steer away from the topic. [There's yet another socialism capitalism thread on the BBS so We can take our business there.

My point in editing your paragraph was to give you an idea of how non-specific anecdotes that can't be grasped[By grasp i don't mean "comprehend the meaning of", I mean take a statement and arrange it into a set of propositions that can either be shown to be logically contradictory [hence impossible] or empirically false] at or argued against [by virtue of their vagueness] can be annoying when you're on the receiving end them.

At 2 days ago, BigLundi wrote: Some of us have probably seen the daily show episode that reviewed the semi-recent policy put into place by Florida that all welfare recipients must go through mandatory drug testing, and how much of a failure that's been. a 2-5% failure rate, and 200,000 in deficit has caused a cloud amongst floridians as to how relevant such a policy is, and how useful it really is.

However...I live in the state of Pennsylvania...and while I love my forests and many of its people...PA is not known for its rational thinkers. Rick Santorum represented us for the longest time...let's just put it that way.

PA is now deciding to adopt this policy and...well...I'm rather pissed off. I feel like no matter how many times this policy is put into place, no matter how many time it causes states to go into deep debt over its application, people still for some odd reason still think it's...a good idea to have mandatory drug tests for all welfare recipients.

MY brother was over at my house while my sister was visiting with her baby. He brought up this new legislation and he, my sister, and my sister's boyfriend and MY roommate all said, "Yay, finally." MY response was, "Eh, this is not good."

Needless to say...that wasn't exactly the popular opinion in the room. IT didn't matter that I had sources for all my information, it didn't matter that I had official studies backing up my points, it didn't matter that I had statistics showing how much money we'd lose and how little effect it would have, it didn't matter that I gave scientific reports that the drug tests would at most catch marijuana users...all they had to keep telling me was, "You're only 21, you don't get it yet." or, "Hey, you have a job, this is your taxpaying money, why aren't you more pissed at welfare recipients?"

See, my brother's a libertarian, so he doesn't even like welfare in the first place. Same with my sister, and her boyfriend(my friend isn't anything, he's just self admittedly ignorant and just likes to go with his gut feelings on things). So I honestly don't understand why they'd be all for the government spending MORE money that we DONT have on UNNECESSARY programs.

I'm wondering is the 2-5% rate imply that the drug-test program only manages to catch that percentage of drug users using welfare for nefarious ends? Or that only that percentage of Welfare users are using drugs. You were kind of vague about it. [Sources would help]

Because I'm not sure what you mean by 'failure rate' I am going to guess that you are saying that at a very high cost to the taxpayer, the state government trying to prevent welfare recipients from using taxdollars for drug purposes... Yet there was no substantial change in the actual welfare-for-drug usage.

If you've got people who are libertarian in any broad sense. They are probably going to feel that if you are using federal funds on something. The usage of those funds should not be perverted. Thus if they are both 1. aware of the abuse of welfare 2. unaware of the government ability to stop it. They will probably end up advocating a kind of program you mentioned. Basically, one extra layer of government to solve another government program.

You could call this hypocrisy on their part if they are actual libertarians, i.e for not having a skeptical view of the potential of success for ANY federal program what-so-ever to achieve it's objectives. I am the kind of person to have an inherent anti-government, and, by contrapositive, pro-market Bias in my thinking, and so I naturally doubt the ability of the government to do anything [optimally that is]. However these sorts of people are always regarded as total party-poopers by people who ask the question "What should *We* [who's We anyway] Do about X Y and Z]

What WOULD maybe be nice is if the Government simply gave a lump sum check to every impoverished person in the US and said that thereafter the US Taxpayer was off the hook for any mandatory obligation to help the poor. Unfortunately one cannot expect such an outcome.

At 2/5/12 07:06 AM, Tony-DarkGrave wrote: well looks like romney won Nevada with Gringitch second and paul and santorum who came nowhere close.

Mitt Romney 11,822 47.6%
Newt Gingrich 5,623 22.7%
Ron Paul 4,619 18.6%
Rick Santorum 2,749 11.1%
Other 0 0%

At some point when the votes were coming in it was unsure who was going to win second. But Paul seems stuck in a permanent 3rd place position. Romney is the establishment favorite and you can tell that a republican Stockholm syndrome is really kicking in. At some point they may actually get excited that he's their [pre-selected?] candidate.

At 2/3/12 02:58 PM, J1993 wrote:

As far as I can tell from when I studied it Hoover didnt set in motion any significant operations in terms of economic intervention besides increasing taxes though he certainly had some ideas albeit the ones that were implemented had low funding to the point of pointlessness due to the economic orthodoxy of maintaining a balanced budget. That said some of his ideas were adopted by FDR and when implemented properly which is to say when they actually got funding they were fairly successful.

Quoting from http://www.thefreemanonline.org/featured /great-myths-of-the-great-depression/

Hoover dramatically increased government spending for subsidy and relief schemes. In the space of one year alone, from 1930 to 1931, the federal government's share of GNP increased by about one-third.

Hoover's agricultural bureaucracy doled out hundreds of millions of dollars to wheat and cotton farmers even as the new tariffs wiped out their markets. His Reconstruction Finance Corporation ladled out billions more in business subsidies. Commenting decades later on Hoover's administration, Rexford Guy Tugwell, one of the architects of Franklin Roosevelt's policies of the 1930s, explained, "We didn't admit it at the time, but practically the whole New Deal was extrapolated from programs that Hoover started."[6]